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Language programs boost academics in Buncombe schools

Julie Ball
jball@citizen-times.com
First-grader Maria Soltro, in Diana Restrepo's Spanish immersion class, participates in an exercise Sept. 8 at Glen Arden Elementary School.

ASHEVILLE - Teacher Diana Restrepo held a card with a picture of a pair of socks to her forehead.

She couldn’t see the picture on the card, but through a series of questions to her first-graders, she made guesses.

Restrepo asked her questions in Spanish. The children listened and answer “si” or “no.”

These students are in their second year in the popular Spanish immersion program at Glen Arden Elementary.

Starting in kindergarten, students learn from native Spanish speakers. They hear almost all Spanish during the school day. The teacher assistant in Restrepo’s class is also a native Spanish speaker.

This year, the program added a second kindergarten class. It is one of four language immersion programs offered at Buncombe County elementary schools. The program at Glen Arden is for native English speakers.

Avery’s Creek, Oakley, and W.D. Williams elementary schools have dual or two-way language programs. Each class has native English speakers as well as students who are learning English. Students in those classes hear mostly Spanish in the early grades and gradually increase the amount of English instruction.

“In kindergarten, they are sponges,” said Elimerd Aponte, a first-grade teacher in the program at Avery’s Creek. “They just absorb everything. They have this wide open brain, and everything you put inside there is gonna stay there.”

Since 2005, more and more North Carolina school districts have added dual language/immersion programs. Educators cite research that shows students perform better academically and have higher proficiency levels in both languages.

The number of school districts with these programs has grown from four in 2004-05 to 33 featuring more than 120 programs, according to Helga Fasciano, special assistant for global education for the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction.

“We have been astonished by the growth overall,” Fasciano said. “When you look at the fact we had four districts actively engaged in this kind of programming and now we have 33, that’s pretty phenomenal.”

The most common immersion language is Spanish although some schools in North Carolina have programs in Chinese, French, German and Japanese.

The Kituwah Academy in Cherokee offers immersion in the Cherokee language for young students.

Bruce Drysdale Elementary in Henderson County and Eastfield Global Magnet School in McDowell County also have Spanish programs, according to the state Department of Public Instruction.

Full immersion

The Glen Arden program is beginning its sixth year. Kindergarten students who started in the program are continuing with it in fifth grade at Koontz Intermediate School. Plans call for continuing the program into sixth grade at Koontz, according to Cheri Boone, global education specialist for Buncombe County Schools.

The Glen Arden program is a partnership with the Visiting International Faculty organization.

VIF recruits teachers from other countries and screens them. The visiting teachers' visas are for three to five years, according to Kristina Specht, principal at Glen Arden Elementary. This year, Specht has teachers from Mexico, Spain, Colombia and Ecuador at Glen Arden.

Diana Restrepo gets her first grade students ready for a group activity Sept. 8 at Glen Arden Elementary School.

Restrepo is from Colombia. She teaches social studies, reading, writing and math all in Spanish.

“The idea is that the kids can work completely in Spanish, so they can work any subject,” she said.

The students get instruction in English when they go to “specials” such as art and music.

This close to the start of the school year, Restrepo is speaking more slowly than she normally does. Most of these first-graders didn’t practice their Spanish over the long summer and their kindergarten teacher was from a different country and had a different accent.

“Once I see the kids get familiar with my voice, I start speaking at my normal pace so they can get it,” she said.

In another classroom at Glen Arden, third-graders are working on a story in English but teacher Luz María Rodríguez is giving the instructions in Spanish.

The students read a story in English, then they reconstructed it and were asked to create a new ending. Next week, they’ll read the story in Spanish.

“They understand very well. I am really impressed about the Spanish level they have this year,” Rodriguez said.

Students are getting more English because this year they’ll take their first end-of-grade tests and those will be given in English.

In kindergarten and first grade, students are assessed in Spanish only, according to Specht. Then in second grade, assessments begin in both Spanish and English. Exposure to English outside of school helps boost students’ English skills.

According to DPI officials, research has shown students in language immersion programs have higher academic performance, “greater cognitive development in mental flexibility, creativity and divergent thinking” and “high levels of proficiency in the target language and in English."

Specht says the students in the immersion program have scored higher than the rest of the school when it comes to those end-of-grade tests.

“The research is proving to be true for us anyway,” she said. “It’s increasing their problem-solving abilities that also increases their math scores.”

Dual language program

At Avery’s Creek, the dual language program is newer and this will be the first group of third-graders taking end-of-grade tests.

But the school has reason to be optimistic. Second-graders did “beautifully” on reading assessments last year, according to Principal Denise Montgomery.

“Our students who are in the dual language program, they had some of the highest scores in the county last year,” she said.

Luz Mar’a Rodr’guez laughs with her third grade students as they work on group projects Sept. 8 at Glen Arden Elementary.

Boone says what they are seeing so far in Buncombe County schools mirrors the results found by researchers Wayne Thomas and Virginia Collier, Professors Emeritus at George Mason University.

Thomas and Collier looked at data from North Carolina’s dual language programs and found that for students in these programs reading and math scores were higher regardless of economic status, race, special education status or whether a student began with limited English.

Educators say becoming bilingual will open up more opportunities to these students and make them more competitive.

“Being bilingual opens a lot of doors for them in the future," Aponte said. "One of the things that the parents say is ‘I wish I could have had this opportunity when I was studying.’"

Kindergarten teacher Claudia Gonzalez says it will also make it easier if the students decide they want to learn additional languages in the future.

“Sometimes when you have already another language, it’s more easy to have a third or fourth,” she said.

From 28 to 30 percent of Avery’s Creek students are native Spanish speakers, according to Montgomery.

Having native Spanish speakers like Gonzalez and Aponte has helped improve outreach to those families, she said.

“They have been instrumental in helping pull our community together,” Montgomery said.

Growing demand 

At Avery’s Creek and Glen Arden, parents must apply for the programs and space is limited.

“We feel very lucky that we’ve been able to be a part of this,” said Glen Arden parent Monica DeMatos. DeMatos has a third-grader in the program.

“It’s a gift for my child to have a second language,” she said. “I think from such a young age it opens up a part of the brain that makes it more receptive to more languages in the future.”

Third-graders speak to each other in Spanish and English while working on a group project in Luz Mar’a Rodr’guez's class Sept. 8 at Glen Arden Elementary.

Jolie Sigmon, who has a third-grader in the program at Avery’s Creek, said her daughter “likes to be challenged” and she thought this program would do that.

It will be an asset down the road, Sigmon said.

“I think her English reading level is pretty high as well as the Spanish,” she said.

Montgomery said one family moved to the area from Washington state to enroll in the program at Avery’s Creek.

“They found us on the internet and moved to this community because of our dual language program,” Montgomery said.

Angela Bailey has two children in the full immersion program at Glen Arden.

Bailey said she struggled to learn a foreign language in college. “I had done enough research to know that if you learn a foreign language at a young age, it makes it easier to learn,” she said.

Bailey's fourth-grader and second-grader are now “fairly fluent.” They tested their knowledge during a trip to Mexico over the summer.

“They definitely were able to have conversations,” she said.

Bailey said the program is also exposing the children to other countries and cultures and helped them become “international learners.”

“That is another thing that I feel like has truly benefited them,” she said.

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