EDUCATION

USD 501 bilingual students head to middle school

More than 600 students now enrolled in dual-language programs, with more on waiting lists

Celia Llopis-Jepsen
Fifth-grader Trip Carter, left, reads a book to kindergartner Diego Gonzalez-Talavera at Whitson Elementary Friday. Both students are in a bilingual program that teaches them Spanish and English.

Whitson Elementary student Trip Carter already is thinking about the typical things that go along with finishing fifth grade and graduating to middle school. He is looking forward to having a locker, and he’s told his parents he might like to take band.

But a more unusual aspect of this 11-year-old’s upcoming middle school career is perhaps the one that seems most natural to him: His coursework will be in two languages, Spanish and English.

That is nothing new to Trip, a native English speaker who has been attending school in both languages since kindergarten.

“It’s fun to learn a new language because you can speak to other people that you probably couldn’t normally speak to,” he said Wednesday.

Next school year is a milestone in the expansion of Topeka Unified School District 501’s bilingual programs: Trip’s class of about 20 will become the district’s first dual-language students at the secondary level.

At the same time, it will be the first year that Scott Dual-Language Magnet Elementary School, another, larger-scale bilingual program in the district, will offer its Spanish-English curriculum for all grades — preschool through fifth.

On Thursday, Scott’s principal, Sarah Lucero, accepted an award in Washington, D.C., from Spain’s ambassador. The award is in recognition of her school’s integration of both languages across its curriculum.

“I’ve been telling the kids, we’re making history,” Lucero said.

Origins and

obstacles

Six years ago, USD 501 launched pilot programs at both sites, starting with just a few classes — kindergartners at Whitson and preschoolers at Scott.

School board members touted the idea as a potential economic advantage for Topeka that would cultivate language skills in high demand. They described it as a rigorous approach to education tested and proven in other cities, with cognitive benefits for children and the capacity to boost achievement among English-language learners.

Their pitch drew the interest of local businesspeople — with the Topeka Chamber voicing its support — and parents. Today, upwards of 600 children are enrolled in Topeka’s dual-language classes. More are on a waiting list.

Whitson has one bilingual class per grade. Scott is transforming into a fully bilingual school. As of this school year, 18 of its 28 classrooms were bilingual. The switch will be completed in the 2018-19 school year.

About half of the students in Topeka’s bilingual classes are native Spanish speakers and half are native English speakers. The children spend half their time learning in each language.

This expansion isn’t without bumps. Anita Curry, the district’s director of English-language learning programs, said the biggest challenge continues to be finding teachers with the necessary expertise.

This year, the district benefitted from a partnership between the education departments of Kansas and Spain that helped Whitson and Scott secure teachers from that country.

Ana Belen Abril, Trip’s teacher at Whitson, is one of them.

On Friday, as her students enjoyed a game outdoors with the school’s bilingual kindergartners, then paired off to read books together, Abril explained that she hears concerns from some adults about the bilingual concept.

She said some wonder if it might be more difficult for students to learn subjects like science while acquiring two languages.

Abril is skeptical of this argument and believes the students are picking up skills that can serve these students for life.

“The linguistic development,” she said, “that’s incredible.”

It may be too early to evaluate the students’ academic outcomes, though USD 501 has been scrutinizing the results of semi-annual locally administered tests for outcomes of English language learners in the bilingual classes versus their counterparts in nonbilingual classes.

Brady Dean, USD 501’s testing director, said both groups of ELL students score comparably in math and reading in first grade — the earliest year in which the children take these tests. After first grade, however, those enrolled in the bilingual programs pull ahead in those subjects.

Dean said the gains are statistically significant, but the district considers the results preliminary because the amount of data gathered is still relatively small.

“What we want to do is continue monitoring this,” he said, “but right now the results are very encouraging.”

What linguists say

Catherine Doughty, area director for second language acquisition research at the University of Maryland, said research into bilingualism has found benefits that may seem surprising, such as heightened problem-solving skills — an advantage that stems from the way bilingual children sort and regulate information in their working memory systems.

“Basically, their mental workspace is more flexible,” Doughty said, adding that researchers tend to agree on this. “It’s no longer controversial.”

As for helping English-language learners, she said bilingual education doesn’t appear to help them acquire English faster, but can prevent a bifurcation of skills in which children eventually learn more advanced, academic vocabulary in English, but not Spanish.

Additionally, she said children are best off starting a second language early, because research indicates bilingualism is more difficult after age 12. At the same time, studies don’t indicate that children acquiring two languages do worse in other subjects, such as science.

Debra Friedman, an assistant professor of second language studies at Indiana University, said there is a consensus among researchers that Spanish-English dual-language programs are “quite effective” for native speakers of either language.

For Spanish speakers, she said, the programs don’t necessarily do a better job at teaching English than traditional ELL immersion, but “they are no less effective” and “have done a good job in creating multilingual adults.”

Topeka’s dual-language program will change somewhat at the middle school level, for logistical reasons. Students will spend less time learning in Spanish, because of resource limitations, which deviates from the 50-50 split in learning time that researchers consider ideal. Math lessons will be in Spanish, language arts in both languages, and science and other subjects in English.

Linguistic journey

Just a few years ago, speaking Spanish felt more difficult for Trip. As he describes it, he used to feel more self-conscious about it, but doesn’t worry anymore that his Spanish-speaking friends won’t understand what he’s saying.

“I’ve learned a lot more words,” he said, “and want to do it more and more.”

Trip envisions using Spanish someday in his future career. As a lover of books, he wants to be a librarian at the Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library.

If someone comes in and requests a book in Spanish, he said, “I could talk to them and help them find the right book.”