EDUCATION

Topeka USD 501 recruiting teachers from Spain for dual language program

District's goal to eventually have ELL programs in each school

Angela Deines
Diego Marquez, right, is one of several bilingual teachers recruited from Spain to be a dual language teacher in Topeka USD 501, instructing math in English and Spanish. He is teaching at Landon Middle School where several students who started in the district's dual language program at Whitson Elementary are now sixth-graders.

As Diego Marquez begins his first year of teaching sixth-grade math at Landon Middle School, he looks forward to being a student of the U.S. education system, American culture and sharpening his own English language skills.

“This is my first time teaching math in English,” he said. “It could be very interesting. Maybe I can learn and improve my English.”

Marquez, 43, is one of several bilingual Spanish teachers the Kansas State Department of Education and Topeka Unified School District 501 have recruited from Spain to teach in the district’s dual language program. As part of the program that started in 2009 at Scott Magnet and Whitson Elementary schools, students who speak English and Spanish are instructed in both languages during the course of a school day.

The teachers, who are native Spanish speakers but are fluent in English, are in the U.S. on “J-1” visas and could stay in the country for three years as part of the state education department’s Visiting International Teachers program.

As part of the program, the teachers agree to stay in the U.S. for at least a year and the district covers the cost of their visas.

David Boggs, Landon’s principal, said having the dual language program in his building is an “exciting and challenging” opportunity and is part of USD 501’s push to eventually have an English Language Learner, or ELL, program in each of the district’s schools.

“So our ELL program kids would, in the future, most likely go to their home school,” he said. “And as those numbers of ours (ELL students) diminish over here, it will open up even more space for the dual language (students). In the end, we’re hoping that we have a stable population that doesn’t get a lot bigger and certainly not any smaller as our dual language numbers go up and our ELL numbers go down.”

Boggs said he and his staff have grown attached to Landon’s ELL students, but he is looking forward to creating the same type of close relationships with the dual language students who will be using Spanish in their middle school language arts and math classes.

About a dozen of the students who began participating in the dual language program at Whitson Elementary in 2009 on Wednesday started their middle school years as sixth-graders at Landon.

One such student was Trip Carter, 11, who was featured in a Topeka Capital-Journal story in May as a Whitson fifth-grader who began learning Spanish as a kindergarten student. On Wednesday, he said he was happy to be able to continue building on his Spanish language skills in middle school.

“It feels pretty good that I get to learn more Spanish,” Carter said. “And it’s not just like in high school, how they have one class that you can take that’s a Spanish class. I get to keep going with more and more Spanish.”

Gabriela Lemmons will be teaching sixth-grade language arts as part of Landon’s dual language program. She said each day she will teach 45 minutes in Spanish and the other 45 minutes in English.

“I think the most important thing in my role, I believe, is to strengthen the kids’ abilities in both languages to be proficient in language arts in both Spanish and English,” she said. “I think that’s very important.”

Maria Elena Overbey, a former teacher in Mexico who now is a bilingual special education paraprofessional for USD 501, said she is helping Marquez acclimate to the district and Landon and loves helping with the dual language and special education students.

“I cannot be a teacher here, but being a paraprofessional puts me in a situation that is the closest I can be in helping the kids and seeing them succeed,” she said. “I love it.”