By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
Next week when the doors open at Community Park Elementary School, some 80 kindergartners and first-graders will begin an academic experience unlike that of their peers.
The school is introducing a teaching model used around the country but never tried in Princeton before: dual language immersion. The children, whose parents voluntarily signed them up for the program, will learn half the day in English and the other half in Spanish.
They will study math, science and some social studies in Spanish, along with Spanish language arts, while other subjects will be in English. A total of four teachers are involved — two for the Spanish part of the day and two for the English part.
The district says research has found that learning in two languages helps with children’s cognitive skills and raises their performance in the classroom, among other benefits. The minds and vocal cords of kindergartners and first-graders are more malleable at that young of an age, too.
By the time they get to the fourth and fifth grades, those children who have gone through dual language should score as well or better on math and English standardized tests than their peers who didn’t, the district said in citing research on the topic.
“The neural gymnastics of moving back and forth between languages promotes this sort of nimbleness of thought that actually transfers over into nimbleness of thought across subject areas,” Superintendent of Schools Steve Cochrane said. “Kids that age are much more able to do that, to have that flexibility of thinking.”
Dual language immersion is something Priscilla Russel, the administrator in charge of the language arts program at the district, has wanted to do for a “long time,” in her words.
“I’ve had this in my mind for the last 10 years,” Ms. Russel said, seated at a table inside the school on a recent Friday afternoon.
She has read research on dual language immersion and visited schools around the country where it is practiced. Two years ago, then-Superintendent Judith A. Wilson told her to start planning to bring it to Princeton.
Community Park Principal Dineen Gruchacz was receptive to having it at her school, already home to a large number of Hispanic students. In the 2013-14 school year, nearly 20 percent of all pupils were Hispanic, according to data from the state Department of Education. The school draws from the Witherspoon-Jackson neighborhood, where large numbers of Latino immigrants live.
“I always had my eye on Community Park as a perfect location to start this,” Ms. Russel said in citing the Spanish population already there. “This seemed to be the ideal place.”
Community Park has an ESL bilingual program, so it is equipped to teach Spanish-speaking children English, as well as having staff members who are native Spanish-speakers, both women said.
“We have the beauty of a community neighborhood school and the international, multi-cultural population that is very unique in a typical neighborhood school,” Ms. Gruchacz said.
To educate them about the program, parents were invited to the school to hear speakers talk about immersion and get their questions answered. There was some thought that more parents would want to enroll their children than there were spaces available.
“It was a lot of angst at the thought that there would have to be a lottery and that everyone would want to be involved in it,” Ms. Russel said.
All parents enrolled their children voluntarily, although they were asked to commit for six years to reflect the learning curve necessary to gain command of the language. They have the option of withdrawing their children and having them put in an English-only classroom, however.
“So what we would like to do is to have classes that are set with kids that are committed and families that are committed and interested in riding out the whole continuum,” Ms. Gruchacz said.
The district said it chose Spanish as the other language by citing its wide use globally, with more than 330 million speakers, according to FAQ sheet the district created.
One of the goals of the program is to close the achievement gap between white and minority children. Officials were asked how long before parents at the other elementary schools start clamoring for the program, and asked also about the possibility of this creating another achievement gap between children in dual language immersion and those that are not.
“If you have a culture of innovation, then you have to start someplace,” Mr. Cochrane said. “And you see what works and you take best practice once it’s refined and then you find ways to expand it.”
The district plans to evaluate the program after two years. Looking ahead, the district will add dual language in second grade at Community Park and another grade every year after that up until fifth. Beyond that, John Witherspoon Middle School would have a subject taught in Spanish and an advanced language course.
By sixth or seventh grade, the students are expected to reach fluency in Spanish.
“We’re moving forward confidently. Research is there to support that this is a good program,” Ms. Gruchacz said. “But like with any program, you wouldn’t necessarily implement something that is so transformative on a grand scale. You also want to be able manage it and know that it will work well with the right teachers, with the right people in place to run the programs.”
In the classroom, children’s oral proficiency in the language will be measured. Teachers will do comprehension checks to see if students understand the language. Ms. Russel plans to be in the school weekly monitoring how things are going.
For the first few months, children still will be able to answer or respond to their Spanish teacher in English. But as the year progresses, there will be a point where they will need to answer in Spanish.
“You want them to feel comfortable taking the risks and speaking and learning,” Mr. Cochrane said. “So the teachers stay within the language and then we move in a developmentally appropriate way toward a time when the children are going to be more comfortable remaining in the Spanish.”
