Seeking Bilingual or Immersion Spanish school for my children (Detroit: home, school district)

[ellisnba]

We are relocating to the Detroit area. We will probably live not far from the birmingham area. My children currently attend a Spanish immersion school. It is a very intense program. They alternate english on one day and spanish on the next day. The take the same classes on the english day as they do on the spanish day. For example when my son was learning to read, he was learning to read in English and Spanish at the same time. Does anyone know of a Bilingual or Spanish immersion program in the Detroit area?

[svanmeek]

I too relocated to Birmingham and was looking for a Spanish immersion school. Granted my daughter is a baby but I've been speaking Spanish to her at home but feel it will be a challenge as she gets older. Please let me know what you have found out. Would appreciate the info!

[MIEng]

My kids elementary school have a Chinese immersion program (at UCS), but I have not heard of any Spanish immersion program in elementary schools. That would also be neat.
They will be having English in the morning and Chinese in the afternoon.

[Coldjensens]

You must be from California or Texas. Spanish immersion is not common here. In fact I have never heard of any school offering it. Try Cranbrook if you have the money. They may have something. Some schools in SW Detroit are probably Spanish immersion by default. Otherwise you can just find a school district with a good spanish language program and see if you can get your child into advanced classes there.

[mmalva]

For anyone looking for a Spanish Immersion School, there is one located in SW, Detroit. It is called Las Academia de las Americas (The Academy of Americas) This is a school of choice, so there is an application process. There are many people who fear the city, but this is really a good school. both my children attended school here and the staff and teachers treat you children as their own, part of the hispanic culture is to be affectionate and very family oriented. Although, many of the student are latino themselves, but come from good families and parents that are very involved. The school is a pre-K through 8th grade setting. In all the years my children attended school here there was never an incident involving the violence or fighting you hear about at other schools. I believe partly because many of the students start the immersion school starting in pre-school and continue to the 8th grade, so many of the students are like brothers and sister because they they pretty much grow up with each other. Dont get me wrong you have the normal adolescent problems.

[Retroit]

How are they able to cover all the course material if they are spending half the time repeating what was covered the previous day? Wouldn't it make more sense to try to learn English as quick as possible than continue on in English so that you can learn everything that kids at non-immersion schools are learning?

When my Italian grandparents came to America, they not only wanted their children to learn and use English exclusively, but they, too, tried to learn and use English as much as possible, even to the extent of taking English classes as adults.

[ForStarters]

Originally Posted by Retroit

How are they able to cover all the course material if they are spending half the time repeating what was covered the previous day? Wouldn't it make more sense to try to learn English as quick as possible than continue on in English so that you can learn everything that kids at non-immersion schools are learning?

When my Italian grandparents came to America, they not only wanted their children to learn and use English exclusively, but they, too, tried to learn and use English as much as possible, even to the extent of taking English classes as adults.

I took Spanish in high school as a foreign language was required. Any intelligent parent who wants their child to be successful in a global world is going to press their kids to learn a foreign language. The ability to speak a different language, especially Spanish, opens many opportunities in virtually all fields including business, engineering, law, and medicine. International companies, including the Big 3, pay huge premiums to employees who can communicate and do business overseas. There's no better path to job security than to be a bilingual professional. I wish I would have stuck with it; it would be a major advantage to me right now if I had.

[Coldjensens]

Originally Posted by Retroit

How are they able to cover all the course material if they are spending half the time repeating what was covered the previous day? Wouldn't it make more sense to try to learn English as quick as possible than continue on in English so that you can learn everything that kids at non-immersion schools are learning?

When my Italian grandparents came to America, they not only wanted their children to learn and use English exclusively, but they, too, tried to learn and use English as much as possible, even to the extent of taking English classes as adults.

There is a difference between Spanish immersion and bi-lingual education. Bi-lingual education means that the kids are taught in both Spanish and in English. This system is a proven failure. You end up with kids to never learn much in either language. Spanish immersiion is placing your kids in a school where no one ever speaks anything but Spanish. It is like sending them out to Mexico as an elemntary school exchange student. This supposedly has better results than bi-lingual education, but after a few years, you need to switch to an education in English so your kids can catch up. They will be very proficient in Spanish and can continue to take spanish classes and if you speak English at home, they can catch up in Englinsh in a few years. We have some friends who did this with their kids and it worked out ok. Their kids were very bright and their parents very motivated, so they were going to do well wherever they were educated. One problem that occured in two families. Some of the kids ended up hating spansih, and would not take Spanish classes once they were moved to an English based school. One of the kids turned out to be very prejudiced. He hated "Mexicans" I suspect that he may have been picked on in elementary school.

Thus, while it worked in that all of the kids ended up being proficient in Spansih and eventually caught up with English, it did not entirely turn out as planned or expected, but then what ever does?

In some parts of the Southwest, including many parts of Southern California, English is no longer the primary language. You have to know Spanish to live there, or you will have to move to an english only enclave. the Spanish speaking families are out producing the english speaking families by a substantial margin, plus millions of new Spanish speaking families move to the US every year. It is not impossible that the United States will be a primarily Spanish speaking nation wihtin 50 - 100 years if the current trends continue. However I doubt that we will ever drop english altogether. It has become the international language for business, trade, engineering among other things.

However we should also keep in mind that most of the worlds population speaks chinese (lots of different dialects, but Mandarin seems ot be the most common by far). Perhaps it would be best to teach kids English, Spanish, and Mandarin. But then when will they have time to learn other things?

[MIEng]

Originally Posted by Retroit

How are they able to cover all the course material if they are spending half the time repeating what was covered the previous day? Wouldn't it make more sense to try to learn English as quick as possible than continue on in English so that you can learn everything that kids at non-immersion schools are learning?

.

That's exactly the idea of an immersion program. In our case the Chinese portion is not a repetition of the morning work in English but rather part of their math, social studies etc is learned in chinese. They also learn about Chinese culture and history. Also the songs and stories they read in the classroom are the same that are taught to school children in China.

We speak exclusively Spanish at home and all of our kids are completely fluent in both English and Spanish ( with no accents). I would love him to be fluent in Chinese too.

[MIEng]

I wanted to add that we have to change the way we see language Today. A lot of people still talk about the way their grandparents wanted to speak exclusively English and such. That was a 100 years ago and we live in a very different world.

We only speak Spanish at home unless we have neighbors or friends over that do not speak Spanish. But we made sure that our kids always attended good childcare and preschools and made sure they learned proper English there. They are as good English speakers as any other kids their age. If we stopped talking Spanish to them they will lose that opportunity and it would be irresponsible of us to allow that to happen.

We are planning a trip to either Spain or South America soon. I want them to understand that there are many countries that also speak Spanish with many different cultures. And once our son becomes a little more fluent in Chinese we would love to go to China, but that would be in a couple of years.