Anne Spiegel’s first grade class at Orrington Elementary School is drawing shapes today for its Wednesday morning warm-up excercise.
While Spiegel takes attendance, the 24 children in the class are free to move about the classroom to help their friends. Some of them want to go to the bathroom. Others can’t quite figure out what do. One little girl in a pink jumper suit can’t find her pencil. This chaotic morning routine is just an ordinary elementary school classroom, except for one thing — it is mostly conducted in Spanish.
The children are instructed to draw triangulos and cuadrados. When they’re sharing books or pencils, Spiegel reminds them to say por favor and gracias. Although this classroom looks ordinary — its walls covered in colorful posters — a closer look at these posters will give you an idea of how different this classroom is. The alphabet, for example, is reinforced with posters that read “A for amigo,” “B for bien” and “C for casa.”
But don’t be fooled. This isn’t an English as a second language class. In fact, half of these students come from English-speaking families who might not even speak Spanish at home.
Spiegel’s class is just one of the few classes within the Evanston/Skokie School District 65 that uses the Two-Way Immersion program, an experimental bilingual education program that pairs English-speakers and Spanish-speakers in the classroom. Since 2000, District 65 has had two groups of TWI students — one at Orrington and the other at Washington Elementary School, 914 Ashland Ave.
TWI originally started as an alternative to the Transitional Bilingual Education model (TBE), which placed Spanish-speaking students in English classes and then pulled them out for part of the day for additional instruction. But this method relied on “subtractive bilingualism,” according to kindergarten TWI teacher Karen Barbour.
“In TBE, there is a notion that we’ve got to get rid of Spanish, that a bilingual child means a child not having enough English,” said Barbour, who is a teacher at Washington.
“In TWI the Latino children have their language and culture validated in every moment. They achieve much faster and become more assertive in learning,” she said.
And Spanish-speaking TWI students also perform better on tests in comparison to the Spanish-speaking TBE students — 69 percent higher on a first grade reading test, according to Christina Honos, District 65 bilingual specialist.
In a first grade class like Spiegel’s, almost the entire day is taught in Spanish. Although the English-speaking students don’t always understand what she is saying, through repetition and sign-language they are slowly catching on.
When the two halves of the class separate for language arts instruction, it is hard to distinguish the two groups. In the English-speaking language group, kids say “look at my sombrero” and “gracias” just as their Spanish-speaking counterparts use English phrases in their conversation.
“It’s hard for them, but they learn very quickly (to speak Spanish),” Barbour said.
“It’s not giving English speakers less; this isn’t slowing them down. TWI is just on a much more equal field,” she said.
In Pam Rodgers’ second grade class at Orrington, the emphasis is on creating equality. Every English-speaking student is paired with a Spanish-speaking student, and together they go through the spelling lesson by sounding out the words to each other and looking up definitions. Today the lesson is in English. Next week it will be in Spanish.
But the emphasis of the program is not only on teaching English but also on cultivating bilingualism. “What has to happen is that they gain high levels of profiency in both languages,” Barbour said.
Evanston resident and Argentinian native Maria Nobile put her son Matias in TWI not only for him to learn English but also to maintain his Spanish.
“When we came here he didn’t speak any English,” she said. “Now he speaks English very well. When I went to the district for both my kids, the bilingual specialist told me about the program and I wanted my kids there. I wanted my son to speak and write well in Spanish and I think he can do that now.”
Likewise, Guatemalan native Nery Orellana said his 6-year-old son Andres is able to function bilingually even in kindergarten, reading in both Spanish and English.
“In general he loves it,” Orellana said. “The fact that the teacher speaks Spanish is very important to him, and he related to her in a more familiar way as opposed to a stranger.”
For English-speaking families, the TWI experience is an opportunity to introduce their children to Spanish at an early age.
Although there is an application process and lottery system for the 24 coveted spots in each new TWI kindgarten class reserved for English-speaking students, the demand is high. Last year 67 applications were received, Honos said.
Evanston resident Jennifer Moran wanted her son Lewis involved in the program because she is a bilingual educator and took part in the movement to establish TWI in District 65.
“He loves it,” she said. “He has some bilingual cousins and it was fun during Christmas when he really used Spanish. Personally Lewis has been having a positive school experience. He loves reading in English and he’s where he should be.”
Parents who might not speak Spanish at home, however, still choose to put their children in TWI as an alternative to the general education track. Keith Banks, a black parent of two TWI students at Washington, said he enrolled them in TWI because it gave them the opportunity to learn a new language and another culture. His two daughters come home singing songs in Spanish and have helped him and his wife learn Spanish.
“We live in a multicultural society,” Banks said. “We thought that in the long term it would be an advantage for them to speak another language, especially one that is very useful in the United States with the growing Hispanic population.”
Although many community members have criticized the TWI program saying that it may not help African American students, Banks is convinced there is a significant demand for TWI from the African-American community and that TWI can reach across racial lines.
Despite the soothing of such concerns, TWI remains a center of controversy. In early February, the district’s bilingual education committee recommended to make Washington school the only site for TWI, essentially creating what some called a “bilingual magnet.”
Following vociferous protest from parents and community members, board members voted Feb. 18 against that plan. Instead they voted to expand TWI to four classes, creating two groups at Washington and two at another elementary school.
Barbour said although there is still a lot of animosity in the Washington community, she hopes that people will accept TWI for what it is — a bilingual program that will eventually close the achievement gap between Hispanics and their classmates.
At Orrington, controversy is the last thing on the minds of these children. The Spanish-speakers in Spiegel’s class are missing their Spanish instructor for the day.
When the substitute asks who speaks English, most of the children nod yes. But even the few that don’t speak English participate in today’s language project — listening to a story called “The Goat in the Chile Patch.”
And when she asks them questions, some of them answer in Spanish and some in English.
But in this class, either is acceptable. nyou
