By Terry Miller
Plymouth School in Monrovia has implemented a first of its kind in the district – a dual immersion program for its students to learn Mandarin. In fact the school is on the cusp of what will perhaps become a trend in all public schools in California with the general uptick in Asian- American population in Los Angeles County.
Dual immersion programs include native English-speaking students and native speakers of a foreign language. The goals of dual immersion programs are to develop bilingualism/biliteracy, academic achievement, and cross-cultural competencies for all students. Dr. Katheryn Lindholm-Leary, one of the country’s leading experts on dual immersion programs defines them as:
“[In dual immersion programs] English-dominant and target-language-dominant students are purposefully integrated with the goals of developing bilingual skills, academic excellence, and positive cross-cultural and personal competency attitudes for both groups of students.”
In dual immersion programs, students learn content through both their native language and the target language. Simultaneous translation is never used. By the end of 5th grade, all students in the program are proficient in English, proficient in the target language, and at or above grade level academic benchmarks.
Plymouth’s principal, Suzanne Heck says they just jumped in feet first with the program and found exceptional support from not only the school board and teachers but particularly from the parents .
Principal Heck says that forty students are currently enrolled in the exclusive program at Plymouth. The students spend half the day learning Mandarin and the other half of the day learning Common Core principals as directed by the state of California.
“Bilingual education has basically become a dirty word, but dual-language programs seem to have this cachet that people are glomming onto,” said Julie Sugarman of the Center for Applied Linguistics, a Washington, D.C.-based research organization. “They are successful for English-language learners. And white, middle-class parents want these programs to give their children an edge in the increasingly globalized world.”
