Friday, November 19, 2010

Proposed Schools Policy Says Two Languages Better Than One

Schools and parents are debating bilingual education to help students learn two languages at once, instead of losing the Spanish they speak at home. We need people to be fluent in more than one language and these people will have much better career choices too. - - Donna Poisl

By EMILY ALPERT

Minerva Espejo remembered her own rocky start in English after moving from Mexico to San Diego as a teenager. English classes were bewildering; a bilingual class taught by a teacher who barely understood Spanish was even worse. She improved her English at home by pulling out a dictionary night after night to pick up the vocabulary that helped get her to college.

She didn't want the same troubles for her children. Soured by her own experience, she rejected the idea of a bilingual class and enrolled her kids in a different program until she found out about Sherman Elementary, where kids spend half the day in English and half in Spanish. Her son, who just finished up first grade at Sherman, can explain his homework in English and read to his grandfather in Spanish.
Click on the headline above to read the rest of this story! This is only a small part of it.

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