When we became parents, we hoped to raise our children to be bilingual. However, since I am the only Spanish speaker in the house, and most of our social circle speaks English, the reality is that my kids speak English and occasional Spanglish.
For a time, I had pinned my hopes on sending the girls to a bilingual immersion program, an option we are lucky to have in our district. This winter when we applied to the lotteries (it’s all lottery in our area, except for our neighborhood school), we were lucky enough to get drawn for our second choice bilingual program, and waitlisted for our first.
However, as I’ve shared in earlier posts, we have concerns about the traditional pedagogy at both of these schools and after a lot of discussion, my husband and I decided that if we were chosen for one of the progressive charter schools in our area, that we would send our daughter there. This week, we found out that we did get in at one of these schools, a k-12 progressive school on a lovely campus which has many things that we want, but absolutely no language instruction until high school.
We are still waiting to hear on a handful of other lotteries (at one popular LA charter we are #729 on the waitlist!), but we are excited about the options we have already. Our ideal plan for her would actually be to keep her at her current school, which goes through kinder, and then move her to a first grade or even into kindergarten as a 6-year-old.
If we knew that we would have good options next year, we would wait, but we don’t; we have enough friends in these lotteries to know that we are lucky to have these choices this year and we absolutely cannot count on these doors to be open next year. The progressive charter she will likely attend probably won’t have more than 15 spaces next year, down from over 60 due to a new transitional kindergarten program opening this year, so it really is a small window of opportunity that we have.
In our dreams, we would be able to send our girls to a progressive bilingual immersion program on a beautiful campus run by loving and devoted faculty. And we would be able to put her there at the exact time we felt she was ready.
Unfortunately, that dream is not available to us, and when we sat down to do the math and really prioritize what we want them to get out of their education, creativity, leadership, and empowerment ranked higher than bilingualism.
We decided it would be easier to supplement the things lacking at a progressive charter than to supplement what would be lacking at a traditional bilingual school. We can hire a spanish tutor, travel and send the girls to Spanish camp. Maybe they won’t be fluent before they get to high school, but already they understand some Spanish, sometimes surprisingly so.
We often read to the girls in Spanish, and while often they do need a translation, I am surprised by how much they understand on their own. It is my hope that with the little we are able to give them, plus some language experiences we’ll have to create, by the time they do get to high school, they’ll be ready to become fluent.
It’s not ideal, far from it, but sometimes, good enough has to be enough.
{Photo by whgrad}
Elsie, I sympathize completely. Our family is going through the same thing. Waiting lists and lotteries and stress…oh my! School choice in the US is not ideal, and I wish we lived in a country that prioritized multilingualism. Hopefully by the time we become grandparents, things will catch up…that is, if the economy ever allows for public schools to make allowances for “extra” things like foreign languages!
You’re doing a great thing by exposing your daughters to Spanish in whatever form and amount you can. We are all trying our best, and our kids will appreciate it down the road.
I can completely identify with all of your thoughts in this post. Our family is bilingual (english / spanish) and although we love our community in Portland, Oregon, the options for quality bilingual education here are so limited. The best option is a private school that it extremely expensive. I’m hoping that we can provide enough Spanish to our son at home to keep him conversant in both languages. This website is one of my tools to help us get there.
Thanks for posting your thoughts – it helps to know we are not alone.
Here in the southeast we’ve run into similar problems, as we’re soon moving away from our beloved montessori dual immersion school because of a job move and we’ve actually found a number of afterschool programs that are kind of like 2 hour immersions. So while the schools we’re looking at are largely English- dominant with an hour or so of Spanish instruction daily, adding two hours in the afternoon, plus a mostly Spanish home life, we’re hoping to keep up our son’s currently high level of fluency in both of his mother tongues. Are there similar after school programs in your area of the country?
So let me get this straight, your daughter was accepted to a dual immersion program but you’re passing on it to send her to an English-only school? I thought the purpose of this website was to promote bilingualism, but posts like these degrade that effort. It’s almost like “I will send my child to a dual immersion school…but only if it’s ‘as good or better’ than some other monolingual school.” Certainly it’s your choice as parents, but it seems to me that we need more advocates of bilingual education and greater parent involvement in bilingual schools to help them grow. When we eschew such institutions because another school is deemed “better” we take two steps back.
I agree with Xavier! I respect your decision and I’m sorry to hear that you don’t have access to a good bilingual school, but I feel that parents who are commited to raise their kids bilingual, should support and have more involment in bilingual schools. If we don’t support them , then, we are never going to see a change. For me, it is not only about the language, it is also part of our identify as a family. My daughter is currently attending a bilingual school and I’m thrilled that she is learning both languages. She is learning about other cultures and developing that cultural aspect that goes hand in hand with language development. If I would have continued being the only Spanish resource for her, she would have lost her Spanish fluency by now. We need the support of the school system and commited parents to make a difference.
Not sure what area you of Los Angeles you live in, but there is a new great option in the mid-city area. City school West Adams is a constructivist, dual immersion school. You should check it out.
Xavier and Erika: Yes, you have it right. We chose the school that was better for our children. It was not appropriate for us to choose a bilingual school on principle, when, after repeated visits to the schools, it was clear that the school we chose was a much better fit for our girls. Our area has some issues that may not be true of your school districts. For example, sending our kids to the bilingual school we were accepted to would have meant class sizes OVER 40 after kindergarten, whereas the school we chose has class sizes that max out at 24. Our school district is in the midst of some very big problems. The picture is a lot more complicated than I could lay out in a post for a national audience, due to local issues.
Not all bilingual programs are equal, and not every child is the same. We made the decision that is best for our family.
And no, we are not giving up on all the other things we do and plan to do to expose our girls to Spanish, so the title is a bit misleading, but I didn’t choose the title. Editorial staff determine titles.
Hopefully other parents in similar situations can find some comfort in the fact that they are not alone, and we are all doing our best to balance out what we want with what is available.
Elsie,
I feel your pain. We are raising our kids tri-lingual. One of our languages is French which has notoriously difficult grammar. Spanish is the other language and I am having to leave that to fate and the hopes of being able to afford tickets from South East Asia to Mexico someday soon. French is my mother’s language. I am relatively fluent but I didn’t really speak it much (and left the French schooling system) from 13 to 34 when I got pregnant with my first.
I suffered through the French education system as a child; it’s incredibly rigid and really only suits certain personality types. I know they are trying to make some changes but it won’t be anything substantial during my kids’ educational years. The funny thing is that if we had been in the states, sending them to the French Lycee wouldn’t even be an option as it is prohibitively expensive but we are in Asia and the irony is that the French school is the only private school we can afford. We could probably just about manage the Singaporean one but they are even more rigid!
On a daily basis, I struggle sending my kids there, thinking I could pull them out and homeschool them but then I doubt my ability to manage that. For the time being they seem happy (note to self do not project your own horrible experiences) and all the French people around me advise to stick to it until they are 10 years old when their grammar foundations will be strong enough to pull them out and use a tutor instead.
Here’s to finding a way to get work in Canada! Then we could do French/English schooling and we would be a lot closer to relatives in Mexico! Good luck with your choice. Only you can know what is right for your family.
Elsie, I agree with you. I think that for the development of a kid as person, it is much more important that a school system fits him than that it is a bilingual system. Of course it would be ideal if you could find a school that would fit the personality of your kids and your personal ideas and it will be also bilingual, but if I had to choose, I will also choose for a school fitting the kids in our language.
I think the title is absolutely not true and can cause many misunderstanding in many parents. If bilingual schools were the only way for a kid to became bilingual, the ones of us who have not that possibility close to our home, will never be able to have bilingual kids, and that is not true I can speak out of experience. What it is true is that Elsie will have now to work hard at home to feed the spanish at the same speed the english is growing at school. But that is not impossible…many of us do it everyday
Animo Elsie, tu puedes 
Hi,
I am the only Spanish speaking person in my house and both my kids are fully bilingual even though their schools programs are in English. My 7 year old can read and write in Spanish too. My 4 year old is learning her letters, but is fully bilingual when she talks. How did I do this? Pretty simple. It was my mission to have bilingual kids, so I did it myself. First, I only speak Spanish to them and do not allow them to speak English to me. That way, the only way they can communicate with me is in my language. I only read in Spanish, I play the audio in movies in Spanish whenever it is available (my poor husband has to have subtitles in English). I take them to Mexico for 5 weeks in the summer where only Spanish is spoken and I sit down and work with them in regards to pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary. It’s amazing how people think that because one parent speaks Spanish the kids will simply do it….no. It is work, not giving up and be there for them to teach them in a natural way.
I will be happy to share books or ideas….
Saludos!
Ruth, please share
I am always happy to hear new ideas 
Dear Elsie,
You should always make the choice that fits your children best. But I also want to clear up any misconceptions you may have about the San Rafael program so they do not get perpetuated on this website. Many parents in our area look to this website for guidance on bilingual education. We have been in the dual Immersion program at San Rafael for 3 years and have loved the experience. Our class sizes have been 25, 21, and 28 ( a rise due to budget cuts.) While the education is “traditional”, classes are made up of tables with a large rug for discussions. The kinder year and first grade years involved a lot of music, poetry, author visits, and art. Yes, the school and district are underfunded. But, Odyssey and Aveson both utilize parent volunteers and lots of fundraising to support their art programs as well. We all wish we had the resources of our area private schools. The San Rafael campus is lovely and kids get involved in many cultural events including an amazing theater production each year, a monthly harvest program, and many others. Our new principal is a wonderful force. Our classroom has a wonderful library of Spanish books and my son brings a few home each week. Are there many resources I wish we had? Yes! But many parents in our program come from the progressive education community (cottage coop, walden, etc) and would not tolerate a rigid artless experience! I wish you the best of luck with your decision and just want other parents considering San Rafael or DI programs to have a truer sense of our program than presented in your post. Thanks.
Cynthia:
I’m so glad you posted about San Rafael. To be clear, we did not get into SR; we did get into Jackson, which is where I was given a tour, which included many lovely things, like a garden, indoor/outdoor classroom, STEM class, and a class with over 40 kids. Even though I loved Jackson–it has a vey warm feeling, just like SR, that was a deal breaker for me. I do hope that in the future, there will be a way to lower that class size. San Rafael was absolutely our top choice for public non-charters, and every parent there seems to love it. For parents in San Gabriel Valley, the PUSD and Glendale schools are absolutely great options, particularly compared to the non-bilingual public schools. I have a dear friend whose daughter will be starting in the Mandarin program here and we are excited for them. Mostly, I think that the school board here needs to invest more in the bilingual programs. I suspect that they wouldn’t need to keep closing our local schools if more of them went bilingual immersion. I hope the future is bright for SR and bilingual ed. in Pasadena!