Bilingual at age 6?
These students can't speak perfect Spanish yet, but a school's new dual-language program immerses them in the language.
By JEFFREY S. SOLOCHEK
Published September 25, 2005
TOWN 'N COUNTRY - Having listened to her grandmother all her life, 6-year-old Gabriela Sioudi understands most of the Spanish her teacher speaks, and she pronounces it well when responding, too.
But ask her mom, Jasmin Sioudi, and Gabriela's Spanish is broken up. Mom takes the blame; she spoke English rather than Spanish to Gabriela as a baby. As for Gabriela's reading and writing in Spanish, well, it's nonexistent.
That's why Jasmin Sioudi enrolled her daughter in Alexander Elementary School's new dual-language program this year. She has seen improvement already.
Sitting one table over in Gabriela's first-grade class, Gabriel Gonzalez - who never has spoken Spanish before - has picked up the phrase "Ay, dios mio," complete with the hand to the forehead. He smiles broadly as he talks about how happy he is to be learning in Spanish and English.
"I love it," says Gabriel, 6. "I never knew Spanish and now I want to come to school and learn Spanish, because Spanish is good."
For years, such sentiments got pushed aside in public schools. Spanish was considered a hindrance to success in the English-speaking United States. Some states and communities, Florida among them, went so far as to adopt English-first laws.
None of the studies showing the value of speaking more than one language mattered. Nor did the research indicating that children might become conversant in a language in two years, but not literate for five to seven years, causing some students to fall farther behind if forced to learn in their non-native tongue.
Forget the notion of Spanish as a skill to deal with the growing connections between the United States and Central and South America. Spanish speakers had to learn English, and English speakers would get the deadly dull kill-and-drill verb tense, language lab version of foreign languages in high school, well after their best years for learning a language had passed.
Alexander Elementary principal Manuel Duran wants to change all that.
He considers bilingualism an asset, and in his school, where about 85 percent of the students come from Spanish-speaking homes, a necessity. So when Duran learned that the school district wanted to create programs to lure children from overcrowded suburban schools, he proposed a dual-language program.
"It's a school-to-work initiative, as far as I'm concerned," he says.
Alexander teachers jumped to participate. A dozen spent nearly a month, unpaid, training during the summer. They already were fluent in Spanish - most spoke the language before English - but teaching curriculum and language skills to youngsters was another thing.
"Finally we're doing this as a second language, which is so necessary," kindergarten teacher Lucy Menendez said during one of the summer sessions. "What's really exciting is to see what happens when these children are in 12th grade and they're bilingual and biliterate."
Among Alexander's families, the program also took off. Nearly 200 parents clamored for spots for their children, partly to preserve and enhance their language and culture, partly to give their sons and daughters the leg up that Duran spoke of.
"I feel like he'll get further in life," Sally Sosa said of her 5-year-old, Jacob. "In the long run, he'll benefit."
Interest from the outside, however, was limited.
Just 18 registered from other school zones, well below the numbers needed to ease crowding at such campuses as Westchase, McKitrick, Cannella and Crestwood elementary schools. That has raised concerns downtown, where district administrators are considering cutting back the attractor program because of its failure to attract.
Duran blames a late marketing effort - the program won approval after the district's choice enrollment period had ended - and a general view in the suburbs that his campus, just off Hillsborough Avenue behind a Hooters restaurant, is not a safe place.
"For some reason, they're afraid to take the chance," Duran said. "If they did take the chance, they would see how well it works."
"Cuantos sabados hay en el mes de septiembre?" Fernandez, a native of Mexico City, asks the class. How many Saturdays are there in September?
Some hands shoot up. Other students look confused. Eventually, the answer - cuatro, or four - emerges.
The lesson continues.
"Como esta hoy?" Fernandez asks. What is it like today?
The question registers in the students' minds and faces. Some get so excited they understand that they answer reflexively in English.
"Sunny!" one girl shouts out.
"Soleado," Fernandez corrects, and moves on.
It's okay to answer in English, she explains. Banning it would be like telling the students not to respond at all. At least this way, she says, a teacher can know the kids get it.
Through a reading lesson, vocabulary words and a sing-along, the class remains Spanish only - including instructions and even discipline - for about 40 percent of the day. It would be more, if not for state mandates on the length of reading instruction.
Translation is out in this program, considered ineffective. No one wants to give the students a crutch by letting them ignore the Spanish and wait to hear the English.
"At the beginning, it was hard for them and for me, too," says Fernandez, who was an English for Speakers of Other Languages resource teacher last year.
Now, she finds the students pay attention better and grasp concepts better than before. And they thoroughly enjoy themselves.
"I'm not used to Spanish, but I hear people speaking Spanish, so I say, Let me guess," says 8-year-old Marissa Jerome, one of those who often bursts out in English. "My grandma said when I get to spend the night at her house, she'll take me somewhere where there's a lot of Spanish people... I think I'm going to have this the rest of my life."
The children in the program's third-grade class are equally enthusiastic.
Some wanted to learn Spanish to send letters to their grandparents. Others hoped to understand what the school custodians are saying as they pass in the halls.
"I want to learn two languages because I want to be like my other friend, because she knows two languages," says Jozlyn Crossland, 8.
Nine-year-old Jacob Valentino looked to the bottom line: "Whenever I grow older, if I get a good education in both English and Spanish, I can get more money when I grow up."
The first steps come in the comprehension of simple words and phrases, such as buenos dias (good day) and como estas (how are you), first-grade teacher Dina Perez says. She has her students recite these words and others like them to everyone they meet, until they become second nature.
In addition to teaching children how to roll their r's and have short conversations, Perez provides lessons in culture. And perhaps most important, she encourages the students by telling them if they know two languages, they will be twice as smart.
The message resonates. Jimmy Luu, 6, excitedly notes that he will then be three times as smart. He already knows English and Vietnamese.
How will they know? Teachers gave each student a baseline nationally accepted test in Spanish to start the year, and they'll give another at the end of the year.
Duran hopes the results will show what he expects, that the children do as well or better than their English-only peers. That could attract more students to the program, and also allow Alexander to expand it to the fourth and fifth grades.
Ultimately, his goal is to see the initiative become a learning strand that extends into the nearby middle and high schools.
"I'm not happy with the numbers," Duran says, reiterating his concern over enrollment. "But I'm happy with the teachers, I'm happy with the curriculum and I'm happy with the children we've got in there. ... It's working."
- Jeffrey S. Solochek can be reached at 813 269-5304 or solochek@sptimes.com