‘White Flight’ Sparks Calls for Dual Language
Gina Guarascio
July 4, 2006
CARBONDALE – Adrienne Davis graduated from Carbondale’s Roaring Fork High School in 1999. She is now a teacher at Edwards Elementary School where in a few years all the classes will be taught in both Spanish and English.
Starting this fall, all kindergarten classes will be dual language. And as those classes move up, eventually the entire school will be bilingual.
It is a solution that is working in Edwards, Davis said, where formerly about 80 percent of the kids in the elementary school were Hispanic.
“It is definitely a positive thing,” Davis said. “The kids are all playing together. They’re all in the same shoes, (because) they know what it feels like not to know the language. They have more appreciation for each other.
“It’s so neat to see the parents getting together talking about how their kids are doing. It’s a union of cultures,” she said.
Dual-language learning is a two-way immersion program where native English and Spanish speakers first learn to read and write in their native tongue, while being exposed to oral lessons in their non-native language. The kids are then taught other subjects like math, science and social studies in both languages….(Full Article Here) , (or Here)
