{Photo by: kaylhew}
Living in Orlando, Florida, provides a multitude of opportunities to speak Spanish. Everywhere I go, I hear Spanish speakers. At the bank, I often notice that not a single person is speaking English when I walk in. Sometimes, I find myself jumping in to translate for monolingual Spanish speakers in the grocery store or at the mall.
There is one place in which they are not being accommodated, though: education. Latinos make up 24% of the K-12 population of Florida, yet bilingual schools are hard to come by around here.
Since I have chosen not to put Isaías in school for another year (because of his January birthday and my unusual work schedule), I assumed that I would have the time to thoroughly research options for bilingual programs and find something that fits. Instead, I have found exactly two options: one, a bilingual Montessori school on the opposite end of this sprawling town; the other, an elementary school with a foreign language academy that my stepdaughters currently attend. Sure, plenty of preschools in the area offer weekly Spanish lessons or exposure to Dora and Diego books, but only those two offer full-time instruction in English and Spanish.
What is the cause of this major shortage of Spanish in Orlando schools? For one, Florida has never been known for its high-quality public education, to say the least. This is just another example of how antiquated it really is. Another problem is the growing white-to-Latino prejudice: the exaggerated backlash against the fastest growing demographic in this region. Finally, there are so few bilingual teachers in Florida. Ironically, this stems from the fact that many bilinguals are not given the same opportunities as monolingual Americans, and therefore cannot achieve the necessary scholastic milestones to become public school teachers. Many do not even have high school diplomas, much less a Master’s degree.
Aside from having to face the sad reality that my son may not have the Spanish reinforcement he needs in his academic life, I take a professional stake in this topic. A good amount of my tutoring business comes from bilingual students whose parents do not speak English. I help them apply to college and assist their parents in getting around all the barriers that immigrants face when their children are learning in a language they do not understand. More than the average Orlando resident, I see Spanish speakers as allies, rather than enemies. If we do not train and educate young bilinguals as well as we do white, monolingual Americans, we will end up with an uneducated majority in the near future.
As my son walks around with his little “pack-pack” on, asking to go to school with his stepsisters, I agonize over the fate of his Spanish skills and of my increasingly Spanish-speaking community.
Hola Chelsea ~ I so feel your pain and your total exasperation over the lack of preschools using a bilingual approach in our state of Florida. I live in Tampa, Florida and know that what you have encountered in Orlando holds true here as well.
It amazes and saddens me, and I know that your son has such a wonderful jump start with your dedication to his being raised bilingual that he will come out on the positive end of all this.
My fear is what you expressed as well … what happens to those children who are not given a chance to succeed in both their native language and their new language?
There is one daycare that offers language immersion it is called the foreign language immersion located in Celebration, Florida I travel from Volusia County to Osceola everyday but it is worth him learning a foreign language. At this daycare they learn Spanish, French, and Chinese daily. However you must start your child at an early age for their course work is intense and they are not able to keep up the pace if they start at an older age. They are the only one I can find at the moment in Central Florida
Here in Houston what everyone calls “bilingual education” is actually nothing of the sort. The tradition, and general practice, is they take bilingual or Spanish-speaking kids and move them within a short time into all-English classes. Kids in our family have even been scolded by teachers when overheard talking in Spanish to other kids. We and people we know have also been told all kinds of untrue things by teachers trying to push families into speaking only English at home (even though all the research, if they would bother to research it, is in favor of bilingualism).
I do think this is slowly changing. The district does have several “dual-language” schools starting in pre-K / age 4. Some are normal public schools and some are charters, all free, but all quite small. Even fewer options are around for kids age 3.
They all use a sort of lottery system for admissions. None of them offer transportation to kids from other neighborhoods, the parents have to take care of that.
Anyway, we did not win the lottery, so my son is going to be starting soon at an English-speaking preschool. We have chosen a preschool convenient to the house and with easy part-time policies, so that this way he can still stay the majority of his time with his beloved Tia who is speaking to him all in Spanish.
I am also looking ahead with some worry about promoting his Spanish skills as he grows older, since it does not seem likely he will be supported in this at school, because we would like him to be fully literate in reading and writing Spanish, but his father is “no muy amante de los libros” and I’m fairly fluent but certainly not close to a native speaker. I’ve made a habit of very frequently including books in Spanish in our bedtime reading aloud, and the books are getting more and more advanced, so my pronunciation mistakes I guess are getting progressively more annoying to my husband when he is hearing me, because lately he has been coming in and taking over. In my fondest hopes I imagine that someday my son himself may correct me as I read aloud. I plan to continue reading together with him long after he can read also. All going well we will write things together too.
We feel very fortunate that our kids have access to a trilingual school (English, French, Spanish) and go to Saturday morning German school. However, that access is a product of luck (the school was just founded recently) and our ability to pay (it is a private school).
Given that we live in a very bilingual area, I think there should be access to bilingual education in the public system. Instead there are either English or French schools, where the other language is taught as a second language.
I am nonnative Spanish speaker who currently resides in Colombia and teach at an international “Bilingual” school. Our school does not necessarily follow a specific bilingual model. Our students live in an all spanish speaking environment and receive English instruction in the main content areas and also receive religion and Social Studies of Colombia instruction in Spanish.
My daughter lives in OPOL house hold and attends a nursery program all in Spanish. Eventually I will return to the US and look forward to enrolling her into a Dual Language or Developmental Bilingual school. There is a possibility to move in with my mom (temporarily), but she lives at the beginning of Lake county, but works in Orange near Winter Garden. My first thought of thinking of moving and living in the Orlando area is where would our daughter go to school?
Having worked and study bilingual education in Texas, I am fond of many programs and schools that are there and know what type of bilingual model school I would want her in. As I searched Lake county I found that all schools have ESL programs. I then found a magnet school program in the Winter Garden area that has a dual language enrichment program. I hope that if we decide to reside in Orlando upon our return to the states, that she could go to that school. It is very important for me that she is in a Developmental or Dual Language program if schooled in the US.
My friends and I have discussed just starting our own private Bilingual Christian Preschool.
I live in Jacksonville, FL and facing the same problem with my 2 yr old twins. My heart breaks to think that they will not speak spanish well and fluently!! It is a shame and learning other languages is not supported fully in this country, and more so in North FL!! I wish the government would encourage dual language education more in the USA so kids can grow up to be multi lingual.
Hi Chelsea, my daughter is 4 and is currently in VPK. I live in Orlando as well (actually Winter Garden / Windermere area). My daughter attends Keenes Crossing Elementary. When she started VPK she knew very little (close to nothing of English), we taught her Spanish as a first language and are doing the same with my son who is 17 months old. I briefly looked into bilingual schools as well but the closest one was too far (east side of town where i live on the west side). She is learning English now in school and is doing great in that regard, but I worry about her advancement in Spanish. We are speaking more English in the house now and all of her homework time is done in English. She didn’t score well on her first VPK assessment and this was expected. I worry about how to continue her Spanish education now that everything is switching to English. I also worry about “school readiness” for my son, he will start VPK also not knowing any English. Should I introduce English sooner? My daughter is the only one in her class who does not speak English as a first language. I guess I’m just confused about how to continue advancing her in Spanish as we now focus on her learning English, and…. do I change anything with my son or do the same. Raising bilingual children is not easy! I have read a lot on this subject but still have questions as I move into the practice part.
Thanks,
Denise
Dear Denise,
I can tell you that my stepdaughter started kindergarten knowing no English. She got good grades in her “language arts” in Spanish, and although English at school was introduced bit by bit, in 3rd grade when she started having all-English classes she did struggle at first. However by the end of that same school year her grades in “language arts” in English were back up to the same level where they had been in Spanish. At age 10 she is still stronger in Spanish but I can see that this is not going to be the case for much longer. I say this judging by my nephews who have been in the same school system as she, who are now in middle school and getting to be stronger in English than in Spanish. However, they are still perfectly capable of communicating with anyone completely in Spanish.
My (younger) stepson, however, started kindergarten knowing some English and was put in all-English classes from the beginning. At age 8 he understands Spanish perfectly well, but cannot stay within Spanish when speaking no matter how hard he tries. He just does not have the grasp on it. I believe with a lot of emphasis on Spanish when he is with us, and vacations visiting family where no English is spoken, he will “click” with it eventually. But he definitely has a harder row to hoe than his sister or cousins.
The difference for these children is the fact that just about a year before my stepson started school, their mom started speaking to them in English at her home.
Not only does my stepson struggle with Spanish, his English is, frankly, difficult for someone who speaks only English to understand. He says things the same way as the very broken English he is hearing every day from his mom (they are at her house most of their time). My stepdaughter’s and nephew’s English, when they were the same age he is now, was so much stronger. I feel that my stepdaughter and her cousins had a better foundation in Spanish and then later they were able to just adapt to English with a little mental tweaking. It seems to me that my stepson has a hard time figuring out what is what.
I really encourage you to keep with the minority language with your son at home. Yes there will be an adjustment period at first when he has to do English at school, but it’s really amazing how they pick it up.
Hi Beth, thank you for your reply, that was very helpful. A little background here, I was born and raised in the states and I’m 100% fluent in both languages. This is partly because my parents were immigrants, and the only language allowed to be spoken in the house was Spanish. I have studied Spanish in school throughout my entire life, including college years, so I have a very good grasp on reading and writing as well. My mother moved in with me when I became pregnant with my daughter almost 5 years ago. My mother only speaks Spanish, nothing of English. She takes care of both of my kids while I work. The kids are exposed to the minority language for many hours a day, the cartoons they watch are on Discovery Familia, all in Spanish (they only like Spanish cartoons, they don’t like any English ones). The books I read to both kids are in Spanish, although I have now included books in English to my daughter only. She entered pre-K with a very strong and solid foundation in Spanish. I taughter her as much of the basics as I could before she started school, colors, numbers, ABCs, plus I read to her many books a night. I know that knowledge transfers and I feel this is the reason why she has been able to pick up the English so efficiently. For me, English is my dominant language. I speak it better, write it better, and read it better than Spanish, although I am very fluent in Spanish. I do pride myself in being able to navigate both languages quite easily. This is what I want for both of my kids. This is a conscious choice I am making, not one due to circumstance (contrary to my upbringing), that’s why this is hard. Where for me it was forced, for my kids it’s a choice. Spanish was also my first language with no mixture of English, I feel I had a solid foundation as well. Based on my recent research, I think I will stick with the same choices I made for my daugther, which are … continue to speak to my son in Spanish and teach him what I taught her. I know that he will not do that great in pre-K but he will catch up in Kinder.
I am still left with the question of how to advance their Spanish education where they get zero exposure outside the house? Thank you again for your comments, I continue to be fascinated by this subject.
Denise
Hi Denise! Check out these links!
http://spanglishbaby.com/2010/02/3-overlooked-ways-of-exposing-kids-to-the-minority-language/
http://spanglishbaby.com/2009/02/five-ways-to-boost-the-minority-language-outside-the-home/
http://spanglishbaby.com/2009/09/how-to-create-a-perceived-need-for-the-minority-language/
These are great, thanks, Beth!
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