immersion

Yesterday was the first day of the 2012 “Education Nation” National Summit, taking place from Sept. 23-25 in New York City. The three-day event – which draws more than 300 of the country’s thought leaders in education, government, business, philanthropy and media, is focusing on successful examples of innovation in education, including bilingual education. Summit sessions, moderated by top NBC News journalists, and NBC’s on-air programming will highlight a series of case studies from communities across the country, providing toolsRead More ...

I heard this really interesting story on NPR the other day about Macon, Georgia public schools which are now becoming Mandarin immersion programs. While I thought this was a cool idea, I was shocked by some of the community reactions. There was anxiety on the part of some parents due to the fact that the Chinese instructors were being funded by local nonprofits backed by the Chinese government. NPR reported that, “Some parents see a Communist regime enacting its geopolitical agenda onRead More ...

Our family was fortunate to have had the opportunity to once again immerse our children in Spanish by traveling abroad. You may remember that last year we spent the summer in Peru. This summer was spent in Costa Rica. There really is nothing like travel to enhance your child’s language skills and to provide them with global and cultural understanding. Such trips require planning and effort, but the work is well worth it. Since I do not have family livingRead More ...

My six week trip home to Chile is coming to an end. This is by far the longest I have spent here in many, many years. In my last post I mentioned how happy I was to have my son hearing Spanish everywhere, improving his vocabulary and really practicing the language. But I also realized, that I a native speaker have also benefited from a complete language immersion. Spanish 100% of the time. No English whatsoever. No Spanglish, no fillingRead More ...

Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Daisy Galvis, a Colombian-American actress living in North Hollywood, CA with her husband and two bilingual children.  I’m still reeling. My son was not chosen to attend the Immersion Spanish Program in Glendale. I toured Franklin Elementary school, which has an Immersion Language Program, back in 2010 and 2011 . The sight of kids speaking German, Italian, and Spanish just melted my heart on the spot. I knew this was where my son, Jones, wouldRead More ...