Spanish immersion, right here in Lafayette!

As my previous post touted the private Denver International School, it's only fitting that I also promote Lafayette, Colorado's own Pioneer Bilingual School, part of the Boulder Valley School District. As I understand it, at Pioneer all teachers speak both English and Spanish, but teach exclusively in one language and are paired with another teacher who teaches in the other. Students alternate between the two and thus receive all their science, math, social studies, and so forth in both languages. The school's student ratio is 50% native Spanish speakers and 50% native English speakers.

In my volunteer tutoring at the Lafayette Public Library Homework Center, I've worked with many kids from Pioneer and am regularly humbled by their ability to read a book in Spanish and write a book report about it in English after completing word problems for math class in English and explaining why leaves are green in Spanish--in third grade!

French immersion, right here in Denver!

An article in today's Rocky Mountain News briefly describes the Denver International School, offering immersion classes in French, Spanish, and Chinese starting at the preschool level. While the article isn't particularly informative, at least it was published--that must mean that the editors see programs like this as newsworthy. Moreover, the benefits of teaching three-year-olds a foreign language are presented as an uncontroversial fact, as if it's the most natural thing in the world. According to the reporter, only one child spoke any English in the three-year-old class he observed. Too bad it's too far away for Carl to attend when he gets a little older!