Bilingual education at Holy Rosary School has been ‘a tremendous success,’ says principal
TACOMABy Kevin Birnbaum
Friday begins at Holy Rosary School with kindergartners reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in confident, perfect Spanish. Then they make the sign of the cross in Spanish and say a prayer in Spanish as a student holds up a picture of Jesus.
“Ah, español,” she gently reminds him. Friday is a Spanish day.
Bilingual academyBridget Yaden had never considered sending her youngest son, Anderson Smith, to a Catholic school.
Her two older children are in public schools, and she’d already signed Anderson up for kindergarten at a public school when she heard about Holy Rosary’s new bilingual Juan Diego Academy last August.
Students in the academy, which started this school year for pre-K and kindergarten, are taught half in English and half in Spanish. The entire school will be bilingual when this year’s kindergartners enter eighth grade in 2020.
“When I heard about the 50-50 dual immersion program at Holy Rosary, for me it was no question,” said Yaden. “I went and did the tour just to make sure, but I knew that I wanted a language opportunity for my youngest, and I knew that a 50-50 model is one of the best models out there.”
Minds like spongesYaden, a professor of Spanish at Pacific Lutheran University, enrolled Anderson in the Juan Diego Academy and now serves on Holy Rosary’s board of directors, representing English-speaking parents of Juan Diego Academy students. She said Anderson’s education has been “wonderful.”
“As a Spanish professor and as a linguist, I can see the stages that my 6-year-old is going through,” she said, noting that Anderson had not been exposed to much Spanish before last fall, as she and her husband are native English speakers and her husband doesn’t speak any Spanish.
“(Anderson’s) Spanish comprehension is through the roof, I would say. His production usually is a little bit behind comprehension, but that’s natural. But when he does speak in Spanish, his Spanish is perfect and he’s got a wide range of vocabulary.”
Young minds are “ripe for multiple languages,” Yaden said, and her son is “just soaking everything in like a sponge.”
“After seven months in the program, his Spanish is already better than my high schooler who’s spent time in Spain, spent time in Costa Rica (and) had four years of Spanish — it’s just amazing.”
Reaching out to HispanicsThe Juan Diego Academy has been a shot in the arm for the whole school, which had been struggling with low enrollments, said Holy Rosary’s principal, Dr. Tim Uhl.
There are 54 pre-K and kindergarten students in the academy, compared to just 32 in those grades last year. Overall enrollment jumped from 115 last year to 159 this year, thanks largely to the added attention that the Juan Diego Academy brought to the school, Uhl said.
“Just looking at it in enrollment terms, it was a tremendous success, and we expect that’s going to continue,” he said.
Uhl believes there is a “vast untapped market” of parents who would like their children to be bilingual, and that the academy is attracting families who otherwise wouldn’t have considered a Catholic school, like Yaden.
The program is also succeeding in its goal of reaching out to Hispanic families.
Half the Juan Diego Academy students are Hispanic, Uhl said, and 21 of them are in the track for native Spanish speakers. (Students receive literacy instruction in their native languages, but learn together for the rest of the day.) Overall Hispanic enrollment at the school has more than doubled since last year.
Cultural exchangeIt’s “incredible” to see “the cultural exchange (that) happens every day naturally” between students of different cultures, Yaden said.
“Some of (Anderson’s) closest friends are from Mexico … and his best friend’s parents are from Nicaragua,” she said, noting that the friends can interact in English or Spanish. Increasing cultural awareness is a goal for the whole school, Uhl said.
Students and teachers in every grade are working on learning Spanish. Some all-school Masses are celebrated in Spanish. Last fall, the school held a successful Hispanic heritage event. And the school is supporting a Mexican orphan through the nonprofit Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos.
The cultural aspect of the academy was important to Carmen Klein, whose daughter Camila is in pre-K at Juan Diego Academy. Klein grew up in Mexicali, Mexico, and wants her children to grow up understanding their roots.
Klein also knows the importance of being bilingual. Her own mother raised her to speak both Spanish and English, and that ability “has opened a lot of doors for me,” she said.
At home, Klein speaks to Camila in Spanish, but her husband, Jeff, doesn’t speak Spanish. It doesn’t bother Camila at all. “Switching from Spanish to English is just normal for her,” Klein said.
April 25, 2013