CV Catholic School Pilots Spanish Immersion
Transition Kindergarten (TK) teacher Ms. Maria Fajardo instructs two students on the Spanish words for items in their lunchboxes.
Eight young students busily munch on their lunches around a table while their teacher reads a book about dogs and cats. She pauses to answer questions and then gives directions to the students to wash their hands after they have finished. While this could be any transitional kindergarten (TK) class, these students at Our Lady of Grace School in Castro Valley spend most of their day immersed in speaking and reading in Spanish.
It's a fledgling Spanish language immersion program at OLG championed by the principal, Dr. Eugenia (Gena) McGowan. She says the program gives TK and Kindergarten an advantage that will help them better understand English and, eventually, Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) classes.
"Learning Spanish at a younger age is beneficial for understanding STEM subjects later," Principal McGowan told the Forum. "Many words in science are based in Latin, and it will be easier for them to learn it in Spanish first."
She adds that two of these TK students could only speak Mandarin when they came to OLG and now speak Spanish and English as well.
"Dual language immersion helps with learning and opens up worlds, not just pedagogically but socially. It makes you aware that you are a citizen of a global world," Principal McGowan says.
While half the global population speaks at least two languages, while only 20 percent of the U.S. population speaks a language other than English at home, according to the latest US Census.
Principal McGowan says she developed this immersion program when she was the principal of St. Matthew Catholic School in Phoenix, Arizona. In 2011, her school was one of a few invited to work with the Boston College Roche Center for Catholic Education and its Two-Way Immersion Network for Catholic Schools (TWIN-CS). The program blends native English-speaking students with peers who are native in another language, not necessarily Spanish. McGowan says she focused on Spanish because California, like Arizona, has a large Spanish-speaking community.
OLG is novel because they have many culturally diverse families. She says the school's immersion programs have nothing to do with ethnicity or the language of origin. In fact, most of the eight students in the TK program do not speak Spanish at home. She says the feedback has been positive.
"Parents are excited because they tell us that their students want to come to school and that they are speaking Spanish at home," Principal McGowan said.
OLG's immersion program currently includes 80 percent of their day in Spanish and 20 percent in English. TK teacher Ms. Maria Fajardo collaborates with kindergarten teacher Dr. Emmit Hancock, which currently spends 20 percent of their day in Spanish immersion. Principal McGowan hopes to increase that to 30 percent of the kindergarten's day and to expand the immersion program to science classes in Spanish for 1st Graders.
Principal McGowan says she is currently working on a feasibility study for the Oakland Diocese, which manages OLG, as a proof point to expand the immersion program to the older grades. The school is also launching a summer program for younger students to prepare them for Spanish.