Aliyya Swaby Photo
Mark Sanchez, Yesenia Ureña and classmates peer at the caracoles.
When Rocio Barahona told her students she would bring out the “caracoles,” a wave of excitement rolled through the first-grade classroom.
“Caracoles! Caracoles!” they loudly whispered to each other, as their teacher pulled out tanks of small aquatic snails — and charted a new approach to bilingual education.
Barahona’s class had become familiar with the Spanish vocabulary word in its second year of Clinton Avenue School’s “dual language” program, which alternates two groups weekly between classes held entirely in Spanish and entirely in English.
The students weren’t just learning about snails. They were continuing an experiment taking place at the heavily Latino K‑8 school — an experiment in how best to conduct bilingual education. The experiment is drawing in not only Spanish-speakers but English-speaking children looking to add Spanish to their repertoire early on.
The class began the pilot program last year in kindergarten, which aims to provide more options for students who want to gain fluency in either Spanish or English, by taking turns each week in focusing on each language.
Barahona (pictured) set down a tank of snails on one desk.
“Con los ojos,” she said, making an exaggerated gesture with her hand toward her eye, “no con las manos, verdad?” When she was sure the students had understood not to touch the slimy mollusks, she popped open the tank lids.
This year is the first Barahona has both planned her lessons and taught almost completely in Spanish, she said. Before this, she taught a more traditional bilingual class, switching back and forth between the two languages for students who were stronger in Spanish.
Now, about half her students are from English-speaking families.
“I know Spanish speakers will learn their Spanish. I want the English-speaking students to be a step above where they started,” she said.
Looking For New Models
Traditional bilingual programs required by the state provide the bare minimum for students who need to improve their English, said Clinton Avenue School Principal Ana Rodriguez. Of the K‑8 school’s 620 students, about 75 percent are Latinos, including many immigrants from Latin American countries.
Despite the demand, “the state interest is not for us to teach you how to be a totally bilingual person,” she said.
Last year, Clinton Avenue experienced a “crunch” in its kindergarten enrollment, and had to “run around looking for spaces” for Spanish-speaking students to learn English. Rodriguez said the spike in students catalyzed a conversation among teachers and administrators about how to get “bilingual teachers to service a major population” at the school.
Rodriguez: state law not aimed at making students “totally bilingual.”
“We’re gauging how to come up with programs that will give us a better bang early on in children’s careers,” Rodriguez said. A few teachers visited other schools and took notes on the possibilities, reporting back that a dual language program with weekly classroom changes seemed to be the most effective model, she said.
Columbus Family Academy and John C. Daniels School have each offered similar programs for at least a decade, according to Pedro Mendia-Landa, the district’s English language learner (ELL) supervisor.
Connecticut allocates 30 months — about three school years — for “second-language learners” to learn in bilingual classrooms, before moving them into classrooms taught fully in English. Students who enter Clinton Avenue in kindergarten can stay in the bilingual classroom only through second grade, no matter whether they are ready to transition. That means the pressure is on schools like Clinton Avenue to get students ready, fast, for English-only classes.
Sometimes parents opt their children out of bilingual classes, even if they need the extra instruction.
For now, Clinton Avenue has no classrooms for second-language learners past third grade. “ELL support teachers … pull students from grades 4 – 8 who are showing signs of needing support in elements of comprehension,” Rodriguez said.
Currently, the school has a dual language program in kindergarten and first grade, four classrooms total. Clinton Avenue has enough money to add a dual language program for the next two years as last year’s pilot kindergarten class reaches second and third grades.
Each year, two new dual classrooms are formed, and a bilingual classroom is phased out. Starting next year, when the pilot class begins second grade, Clinton Avenue will not have any more bilingual classrooms.
School administrators hope the dual-language program will eventually expand to all grades in the school – if parents push for it. So far that looks likely, Rodriguez said. Parents enjoy that their children are keeping their mother languages or learning to think in a completely new language, she said.
“Esponjas”
Parents such as Amanda Foxx (pictured), the mother of a Clinton Avenue kindergartener. Her son Sylvio DeStefano’s stepfather speaks both Spanish and English. Sylvio was excited to learn to communicate with him in both languages.
Sylvio DeStefano reads out loud from his journal.
Each week, his lessons mirror each other: “He’ll come home with the letters in English, and then the next week in Spanish.”
Though Foxx herself does not speak Spanish well, she said Sylvio “thinks its neat that he can teach” his mother.
“When it becomes available for my daughter’s class in second grade, I would like her to learn [Spanish], too,” she said.
Johnson reads “Crunchy Munchy” to her kindergarten students.
Teachers in the program said the concept sounds more complex in theory than it is in practice. Caroline Johnson, Sylvio’s English-language teacher, said of the 23 students in Sylvio’s class group, only four or five were dominant in Spanish. While those few students have a more challenging time in her classroom, they are not struggling.
5‑year-olds communicate in a lot of different ways, including the use of gestures, she said. “The challenge is trying to keep track of the students’” progress, while seeing each of two groups every other week. Johnson does not know much Spanish, but said she is learning just by teaching a bilingual group of students.
Every other week, Luisa Espaillat teaches those same 23 kindergartners in Spanish. The few Spanish-dominant students receive the instruction allowing them to maintain their first language.
Espaillat (pictured above) was born in the Dominican Republic but spent most of her life and career in Puerto Rico, beginning at Clinton Avenue just this year. The children are like “esponjas,” sponges, she said.
The other class of 26 students has the opposite composition, with three students from families that speak English. Though often English-speaking parents worry their children will not learn in Spanish, they are usually mistaken, Espaillat said. The learning curve for a 5‑year-old is steep.
Principal Rodriguez said it is important not to “compromise on expectations” in either language and to ensure classrooms are balanced in language instruction. “Children are empowered when they learn a new language,” she said.