Georgia opens its first public, dual language school, an elementary school where students will be taught in both Spanish and English (Associated Press, CNN).
(Via L. Lamor Williams, Star-Telegram) Texas has a large percentage of Hispanic students: more than 30% of 80,000 students in Forth Worth and more than 30% of 16,000 in Arlington. Dual-language programs are becoming popular; there are 231 programs in Texas with approximately 606,000 students. In these programs, both English and Spanish speakers are in the same class with a curriculum taught half in English and half in Spanish for a period of years so that the students become fluent in both languages.
According to Mildred Vazquez, a bilingual teacher in the article, the students need to continue through the fifth grade (they begin in kindergarten) for the program to be effective. Obviously a school needs a large number of L2 students for the program to be viable, which limits the programs primarily to Spanish. And it's not a small commitment on the part of families, but if I had the opportunity, I would place my son in such a program.
This weblog is primarily to help focus my students on concepts, assignments, and technology that we are covering or eventually will do. It will cover what we have done and where we are headed. And it will chronicle my own learning processes with technology and writing. If you'd like to comment, please do. If you'd like to read more theoretical discussions, go to my blog Explorations in learning (see below).