I settled myself in the rocker. Seated on the rug in front of me were twenty kindergarteners, most with hands folded in laps, except for the little girl with perfect black braids fiddling with her friend’s long blond hair. Twenty pairs of eyes – cornflower blue, sea green, jet black – fixed on me as I intoned the timeworn, timeless call to listen, “Once upon a time. . .” But this time the words were “Había una vez . . .” and the class was intently following Leo Lionni’s classic story about not “Swimmy” but “Nadarín,” a little black fish who cleverly saves the lives of all his red sister and brother fish.
I was a guest reader in a Flowery School classroom. The five- and six-year-olds, about half Anglo and half Latino, were enrolled in the school’s two-way immersion program. In the early grades most of the learning is done in Spanish. The book I had chosen was apt, a metaphor for the social reality in these classrooms. The Spanish-speaking children in this program have a chance to experience being the ones who can help, the clever ones can explain and lead their friends who are just beginning to learn the new language. Reversal of the usual social order in Sonoma is one of the wonderful benefits this school-wide program.
As the population of children whose first language is Spanish burgeoned in schools here and all over California in the ‘90s, teachers scrambled to find ways to serve these students. Research was showing that it was critical to provide content instruction in a child’s first language during the long process of mastering the second language, so many educators instituted bilingual programs. In Sonoma, Flowery was the first, followed closely by El Verano, then Sassarini, to implement primary language teaching. But often the students in these programs here and elsewhere were having trouble integrating – socially and academically – when a few years later they entered English only programs.
The cutting edge solution was a Canadian model dubbed “two-way immersion.” Windsor, Healdsburg and Napa all implemented this program, borrowing from our neighbors to the north to meet the needs of our new neighbors from the south. Not only did it better serve the native Spanish speakers, but it also offered the exciting opportunity for native English speaking children to become bilingual too.
Then the voters passed Proposition 227, requiring that “all children in California public schools shall be taught English as rapidly and effectively as possible.” Remember the old joke: “If you call someone who speaks three languages trilingual; and two languages, bilingual; what do you call someone who speaks one language?” You guessed it . . . “an American.”
So, at this inauspicious moment, some teachers and staff at Flowery, supported by a large federal grant, launched their own two-way immersion program. In the fall of 1998 the school in the Springs proudly enrolled in kindergarten a balanced number of English and Spanish speakers who would all begin their formal schooling in Spanish!
There were great risks on the part of both groups of parents. Spanish speakers, opting for their children to become literate in their native language before acquiring the same skill in English, bravely requested an exemption from the new law and entrusted their children’s education to this innovative program. The parents whose children spoke only English took a huge leap of faith, trusting the research and the school, and signed their children up for the global society.
Those first kindergarteners, now bilingual and biliterate, entered high school this fall. Congratulations to everyone who was part of this dream, everyone who didn’t fear to fly in the face of a big political storm. The trustees who voted a couple of years ago to designate Flowery as a “school of choice” deserve acknowledgement. They opened the way for this remarkable program to become school wide, an opportunity for children from all over the district.
Anna Pier is director of educational programs for CommonBond Foundation
