The Standard Times - February 11, 2013
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130211/OPINION/302110311/
By Dawn Blake Souza
Dawn Blake Souza lives in New Bedford. She is a retired New Bedford Public Schools principal.
Relevant Quotes: (Please follow the link above to read the complete article.)
American-born students seldom have a school experience where they can learn with and about their peers in a setting where language and culture are integrated, and English language learners rarely have an opportunity to do the same, as they are typically taught in isolation from native English speakers.
I am familiar with dual-language immersion programs where half of the students are native English speakers and half are native Spanish speakers. Instruction takes place in both languages, so that all of the children become proficient in both languages and learn, in the most natural way children do, how to understand and appreciate their similarities as well as their differences, with the emphasis placed on their similarities as members of a larger community.
This is the simple, well-tested concept of the proposed Esperanza Innovation School. This model of language learning is considered by those of us with experience in the field as one of the best practices that we should be implementing.
New Bedford can become a leader in this effort by supporting the Esperanza Innovation School as a model that can easily be replicated in other schools and expanded to all interested families.
It is time we recognized that we are living in a global society where being able to communicate in more than one language and being culturally literate is a decided advantage, not simply for economic gain, but for promoting real understanding within our human family.
