Class Teaches Spanish to Native Speakers

By Lauren Edmonds
Current Issue #4
http://www.newsobserver.com/1565/story/767536.html

In North Carolina there are 35 school districts that are teaching Spanish-speaking students Spanish. Their thought is that if they are literate in their native language they will be literate in English. Some students are native English speakers but also speak Spanish at home. They have been speaking Spanish their entire lives. Too many of these students don’t know the proper grammar or speech in either language.

There is a high drop out rate among the Hispanic population. This class is hoping to improve their retention. The students are enjoying learning about their heritage and learning about their language.

In the class the students use remote controls to respond to questions, some easier than others. One student didn’t even know what a verb was. This is a problem that they can get to the middle school level and still don’t know parts of speech.

As I have mentioned before, I have many students that come from Dominican Republic. These students are not educated in their own language before they come to the United States. In DR it is not mandated for children to go to school. In order to teach them basics in English they have to have a foundation in their own language.

I have one student now that cannot even write coherently in Spanish. How can I grade a student like this? They have to have a separate rubric that shows growth in Spanish before they can write in English. Many of my students hand in their homework and essays written in Spanish and I have to have another teacher to read and grade it.

This class would be great to implement in my situation, with so many Spanish-speakers. Getting a foundation in their native language to then translate that into English.

The one really unfortunate problem in this class is I have many students that are coming from non-Spanish speaking countries such as Pakistan or Yemen. Now each of the languages would have to have representation. It would be hard to implement in a large city such as New York.