Teachers please comment

i am a kansas spanish teacher. in order to graduate high school kids do not need a foreign language credit. in order to qualify as a kansas board of regents scholar a grad needs two foreign language credits. just checked this w/our school counselor--s6

I'm a California public school first grade teacher. And yes, you are correct. Most elementary (K-6, ages 5-12) schools do not even offer a second language in any form. My county has a large number of Spanish-speaking immigrants from Mexico and El Salvador, so we do have some bilingual programs. Most of the programs teach Spanish-speakers to read and write in Spanish while gradually increasing the amount of English instruction over the years--exiting to English-only somewhere around third grade, though programs do vary. There are also a few "magnet" programs--meaning parents choose to go to them, even if not in that attendance area--that offer "dual-immersion" instruction. In other words, English-speakers and Spanish-speakers together, instruction in both languages, usually using two teachers so each teacher ONLY speaks one of the languages.

In general, California public schools offer no second-language instruction, even as an elective, until high school. Are we backwards or what?

Oops, I didn't add that I believe California state universities and colleges (we have two separate systems) do require one year of a foreign language for admission, but I could be wrong about that.

My son has Spanish once per week in his kindergarten class.

For admission to college, most colleges or Universities recommend that applicants have at least two years of a foreign language, and prefer 3 or 4 years. Few post-secondary schools require a second language.

Many pvt and some public school systems in the US require second language credits of student, more commonly in high school than elementary. However, whie there may be some communities that legislate the requirement, it would be quite uncommon to have such a law. The difference is between whether something is required by law v. simply required by your school district. A school district may require seniors to do a senior project or community service, but that does not mean there is a law requiring senior to do a senior project.

KansasWriter said:

Just double checking something:
Am I correct in saying that under American law it is not compulsory that children learn a second language any time during kindergarten through high school?

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There is no "American law". We have federallaws and 50 different sets of state laws.

It varies from state to state. Arizona requires 2 years of a foreign language to graduate from high school.

What state is your plot set in?

here, in my part of the state, we are have a huge population of recent immigrants, most from northen mexico but from central america, south east asia, too. i have ba's in spanish and english lit., teaching degrees in english and spanish and in something called ESOL. it involves teaching non-english speaking kids. our school is small so most of what i do is one on one. there is another teacher in the high school who does this, 3 or 4 in the grade school. we are a 1A school, but our student body is close to one third hispanic. most of our hispanic kids go on to juco. some on to the 4 year schools. we try to keep them fluent in both languages. not always easy because language is fragile--s6

Former teacher here myself.

Most states don't REQUIRE kids take a foruegn language. Some states do. And within each state, individual school systems have some lee-way to get a little fancier with the requirements.

My high school in Massachusetts (when I was a student, not a teacher) it was a mandated that in order to graduate from THAT PARTICULAR PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOL (not a state-wide requirement, just a very high standard of that one school) a kid needed no less than two years of a foriegn language. HOWEVER, that didn't mean the kids had to actually be PROFICIENT in the language. I took Latin, and Latin is a dead langauge that no one really speaks. But I took my two years and so that was good enough. So on paper, I am fine with Latin. But to speak it?? No way! The same with Spanish. I took two years of Spanish also, and yet I am still unable to speak it and I can barely read it nor even adeptly hear it when it's spoken by others.

And BTW--all of this I am talking about is HIGH SCHOOL. Language experts know full well, that elementary school is the far preferable time to get a kid into a language, and high school is way too late. But to my knowledge few or no elementary schools in the entire country actually REQUIRE a foriegn language. I think we'd be doing quite well if that were the case.

A lot of it is up to the individual school. The high school I went to required at least 2 years of a foreign language or 4 years of English. Over-achiever that I am, I took both.

That, and not from California trying to get into the UC system...If you had, you would have been seen as just doing the minimum...

Which brings up an added point: Although some schools may not require the foreign language education, it is usually required for when the student hits a four-year school.

FR

KansasWriter said:

Hi folks,

Thanks for commenting and Shakey, it's good to meet someone else from Kansas.

JudScotKev: Your comments about California surprised me. I just read this:

California ranks among the top five states in the percentage of public primary schools offering foreign language programs. According to the National Education Association, California also leads the nation in cutting-edge elementary school immersion programs, which, as we'll see below, are the most effective for producing fluent speakers. Finally, privately funded "Saturday schools" offer another avenue for early language study.


That's a little dated (3 years) and I'm not sure about the source. It's not going into my article so I'm not going to investigate it further. Nonetheless, you disagree?

Cheers,
KW

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California probably leads the nation in the number of taco stands, too. We have enough people to be our own country. That doesn't mean that we have good quality language programs available to the majority of students. We do have some. Especially in the bigger cities, we have some fabulous offerings. In general, however, the good immersion programs are small, and if you wanted your child to learn a language other than Spanish (or Chinese in San Francisco), you're probably out of luck.

My issue is that even where the programs are good, there's still the attitude that all anybody REALLY needs is English. The idea, so common in the rest of the world, that an educated person speaks more than one language is still lacking in our culture.

In our school district, here in Ohio, high school students must take one language in order to graduate. However, the options are varied; in addition to Spanish, French and German, they offer Latin and ASL as choices.

PattiTheWicked said:

In our school district, here in Ohio, high school students must take one language in order to graduate. However, the options are varied; in addition to Spanish, French and German, they offer Latin and ASL as choices.

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ASL--yay! It's so great to see districts become enlightened!

A datapoint from Tennessee: no, a foreign language is not required to graduate here. However, in my experience every college-bound student is strongly urged to take one.

In my high school, the languages offered were Spanish, French, and German.

Izunya