print page | send as email | email editor

First-graders in the dual immersion program listen to a lesson in April at Davey Jackson Elementary. This was the first year of the program, which teaches lessons in both English and Spanish. NEWS&GUIDE PHOTO / BRADLY J. BONER

View our entire photo gallery >>

Six-year-old Grant Hagen sorts through a pile of books and picks up one titled Gisela va al Circo.

His mother, Audrey, reads the Spanish title, and Grant corrects her pronunciation of the name Gisela.

“Was she gonna go on a hike?” Audrey Hagen asks.

“No, she was gonna go to the fair,” Grant says.

It’s not uncommon for Grant to correct his family members when they speak Spanish. In fact, he’s teaching them the language.

Grant, a kindergartner, is enrolled in Teton County School District’s 80-student dual immersion program at Davey Jackson Elementary School. This year, his class had reading lessons in Spanish and English, math in Spanish and science and social studies in English. Grant easily switches between the two languages.

“Fifteen plus one?” his mother asks.

“Sixteen,” Grant says.

“Tres mas cuatro?” Hagen asks.

“Siete,” Grant responds.

“One plus six?” Hagen asks.

“Siete!” Grant shouts, smiling.

When asked if he likes school, Grant says he does. Why?

“Because I like when we eat snacks,” he says.

His mother laughs.

“So there you go – it really doesn’t matter,” she says. “The one thing that’s amazing about kids is you drop them somewhere and they pick it up.”

––––––––

It’s a similar story in the Lopez household, where 7-year-old Damaris Lopez is finishing first grade.

However, father Edgar Lopez and Damaris, his oldest daughter, don’t spend much time working on homework in Spanish.

“When we got a lot of work and not enough time, it’s hard to do that,” Lopez says of studying.

Instead, they read Dora the Explorer books, which are written in both languages, and focus mostly on English.

Damaris spoke mostly Spanish before she started school. At the beginning of the year, she had a hard time pronouncing vowels E and A in English.

“Now she knows the difference,” he says.

Damaris also gave her parents a laugh at first because she didn’t know she was switching between the languages when she spoke, Lopez says.

The whole family is learning from Damaris. Edgar Lopez translates for his wife, Cecila, who says she’s learned some words from her daughter. She’s now working on formulating a sentence.

“It’s a tough language, but she’s working on it,” Lopez says of his wife’s efforts.

Lopez took a class for parents of dual immersion students through Teton Literacy Program and says it helped him.

“I can understand more than I used to, and I feel confident about myself,” he says. “What I really like is having the satisfaction of helping my daughter.”

The couple’s younger daughter, Dania, will enter one of two dual immersion kindergarten classes next year. Their 2-year-old son, Edgar Jr., also will be eligible for the program because of a district policy that allows for the siblings of current students to enroll and bypass a lottery.

It’s important that his children never forget their native language, Lopez says, but he doesn’t worry about that because of the dual immersion program. They learn in Spanish for part of the day at school, which allows him to focus on English at home.

Knowing two languages will open so many doors, he says.

“If we speak both languages, we’ll have huge opportunities – better job, better life,” he says.

––––––––

Both families emphasized the importance of cultural exchanges. Lopez said the interaction among children and parents will help to curb discrimination.

“It’s really important that the parents know each other,” he said. “Sometimes our kids are really good friends. When the parents know each other, they can talk and feel more secure. When parents don’t trust each other, kids can be affected.”

Lopez said he used to think Caucasians thought “brown people” were mean, but other parents in the program have explained some of the stereotypes and why “white people don’t think brown people deserve to be here,” he said.

Talking makes a difference.

“They change their minds when we talk,” he said of people outside the program. “The color, it doesn’t matter. We are human. We make mistakes, and we should treat each other the same.”

He knows how it feels to struggle with a new language.

“It feels bad,” he said.

He tells his daughters, “If you see somebody that needs help, help them.”

He hopes that they, too, will talk to people about racial issues and help break down barriers.

Grant’s father, Rody Hagen, also took the Teton Literacy class for parents and said it gave him the ability to help Grant more with homework.

He said the dual immersion program was a “grand opportunity.”

“Our feeling is now’s the time to strike. Children obviously learn languages easier,” he said. “The world’s changing, so why not? And our community’s changing, so we might as well be able to understand what’s going on in it.”

People all over the world speak more than one language and Americans can only benefit from doing the same, Audrey Hagen said. She’s grateful the administration and school board decided to offer the program.

“I just feel like if our community embraces this, then it can only grow,” she said. “I hope this program grows. I know the demand is out there.”

––––––––

More families applied last year for the dual immersion program than there was space, and the scenario repeated again this year, program coordinator Chad Ransom said.

“Overall, the year has really gone well,” he said. “All the parents seem really excited.”

Next year, two 20-student kindergarten classes will each include 10 native English speakers and 10 native Spanish speakers. This year, a total of 80 kids – 40 in kindergarten and 40 in first grade – started the program at Davey Jackson Elementary School.

There’s a waiting list of 20 English speakers and 10 Spanish speakers for next year, Superintendent Pam Shea said during a school board meeting in May.

“Besides the waiting list and its indication of popularity, there are other indicators of success,” Shea said.

Every sibling who could qualify for the program next year signed up, she said.

Of the 40 children who will enter the program, seven or eight are siblings of current students and two are district employees’ children, Ransom said.

Policy allows for 10 percent of the total number of kids in each language to be children of district employees. This year, three families applied.

An initial lottery was held because only two of them – 10 percent of 20 English-speaking kids – could be accepted before a general lottery was held. The third child was entered into the general lottery but was not selected, Ransom said.

Despite the program’s popularity, the district will continue to add only two kindergarten classes each year until this year’s first-graders have finished fifth grade.

There’s a number of reasons to go slow at first, Ransom said. The district isn’t adding positions for the program – it’s only filling positions where teachers have left, he said. Recruiting Spanish-speaking teachers can be a challenge. And perhaps most important, officials need to be sure they have everything figured out before an expansion, Ransom said.

The children’s scores on the district’s standardized reading and math tests weren’t available yet, but parents were told their children’s test scores might lag behind other children at their grade level for the first few years, Ransom said.

The Hagen and Lopez families weren’t concerned.

“In the beginning it’s tough, but I think they’re on a good path and are going to succeed,” Lopez said.

It will be worth it, especially at Grant’s age, the Hagens said. Their seventh-grader, Tomi, is taking a Spanish class and gets one or two hours of instruction a week. Grant gets 15 to 20 hours of instruction a week in Spanish, they said.

“By the time he’s Tomi’s age, he’ll be fluent in both languages,” Rody Hagen said. “Watching all the kids flourish has been really neat.”