That's what a family member asked me when I was explaining to her what an immersion program was all about. Even though I had told her about my job many times before, apparently this was the first time that she really understood that my students are native English speakers, and that their parents had opted to enroll their child in the Spanish language immersion program! I could describe this family member to you, but it really wouldn't matter. There are many people who have asked this question. Their tone of voice ranges from highly curioous, to very condescending.
When our children started school in Venezuela, the common practice for "missionary kids" was to either be homeschooled or attend a mission sponsored school. In our case, to choose the mission school would mean that we would have had to send our children 6 hours away to a boarding school. Our personal feeling was that we wanted to enjoy every moment of our children's lives, and to be available for all those structured lessons, as well as the random teachable moments. At that time in Venenzuela, we were the only family from our mission who chose to send our children to Venezuelan schools for most of the 15 years that we lived there. Instead we enrolled our children in Venezuelan schools where they learned to read in Spanish first. Not only that, but because they were in Venezuelan schools, they not only learned the language, but were trained in the Venezuelan culture as well----not with specially designed lesson plans, power points, or special apps; rather they soaked it in from their teachers, friends, and friends' parents.
I realize our immersion experience is "to the max" so to speak, but the motivation remains the same. We immersed our family in a 2nd language because we wanted to really expand our horizons. We wanted to have friendships that we never could have had with just 1 language. We wanted our children to learn to accept and appreciate other cultures. We wanted to be effective communicators. We wanted to learn from others in ways that would stretch us.
So if you're in an immersion program, why? Why would you do that? Tell us!
~Sheryl René
i completely agree with suzanne! when people ask "why on earth would you do that?", i always want to respond with "how on earth could you NOT want to do that?" just as they find it baffling that anyone would want to put their child into an immersion program, i find it perplexing that anyone would *not* want to be a part of it. let's see, your child could get a great education and at the end of it also happen to be completely fluent in another language . . . or you could just get the great education but no extra language. seems like a pretty simple choice to me. :) (i have a feeling that many of the nay-sayers are mixing their politics into their education in a way that doesn't leave room for an appreciation of the benefits of bilingualism.) after almost five years in an immersion program, i still feel like i need to pinch myself that we are so lucky to have this opportunity!
ReplyDeleteI heard an interesting statistic this week from our Director of Admissions fresh back from a conference of International schools. In the last 10 years K-12 international educational programs have grown from 1 million students world wide to 3.2 million. In the next 5 years it is expected to double to 6 million students. What is international education? It is a program exactly like Immmersion...an educational offering that teaches curriculum with a global perspective infused within the day in an intentional way. Learning another language, no matter which it would be, is a big part of that. Families around the world from Europe to Asia to the USA are looking for an educational offering that is not local, but global in approach. They want something different. The proof is in the statistics. You can see this in West Michigan by the explosion of immersion programs.
ReplyDelete