Disadvantages of a bilingual school

[Anonymous]

I have two children in one of the bilingual charter schools mentioned above. Most of the above "negatives" does really seem to be an issue. Everything does not need to be translated, "PTA" meetings are conducted in English with Spanish translation if necessary for participating parents, school welcomes parent involvement.

The real negative that I see is that recruiting highly qualified teachers who are native speakers of the target language is difficult. I think our teachers are very good, but the recruiting is difficult and we have had some duds.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:i just don't get it. if you aren't chinese, and don't speak chinese in the home, what's the point of sending your kid to YY?

Because I have a strong urge for my kids to do better, be better and have greater options than my husband and I had. Our son's great at languages and it is a good fit for him. We supplement at home by hiring a Chinese tutor. I have his homework translated for me so that I can help him. I learn as much Chinese as possible to support him, too. I don't make ANY attempt to pronounce or correct pronunciation, but I help with reading, comprehension, math and things like that. I hope that I can keep up for the next few years, at which point we will rely more on the after school homework classes and tutors. It is a lot like needing tutors to supplement for any other class, but usually people don't need those until middle and high school. We'll just be using them longer. Middle or high school to start a new language is too late in most cases. That is especially true for level four, tonal languages.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not so much a disadvantage exactly, but the whole bilingual aspect to the school culture can make doing even simple things very complicated. Maybe not so much for YY, where probably few parents speak Chinese, but at a place like LAMB, Oyster or Stokes, where the school itself is trying to make itself a bilingual/trilingual community, it's just a lot of work.

For example, everything has to be translated -- so if you want to do a simple flyer about a potluck, you'd have to have it translated into other languages than English. Sure you can just post it in English, but bleh, that's not really the spirit of the place, so you wait and wait to try to get someone to translate. Also, meetings take twice as long (or you get 50% less done) so your PTA will be harder to organize, or anything else for that matter. Your teachers may be native speakers of the other language, and there may be cultural differences between you and the teachers, or even communication problems. For example, they may not be comfortable writing in English, so you might not be able to use email efficiently to communicate with them. That's really hard if you have a busy work life and can't pick up and drop off in person. Also, sometimes culturally the rah-rah PTA type A mom stuff just doesn't really go over that well. That's nice on the one hand that you can take a break, but on the other hand, let's face it, it's rah rah type A moms who get stuff done. So projects move slower, parental buy-in takes longer.

There are plenty of work-arounds for these things and in fact, I found the school culture to be surprisingly interesting and good for our family. I came in as a type a rah rah mom and left as something different, despite myself. My child really gained a wonderful world perspective from the experience.

These are parent and school communication issues that can happen at any public school in any language. (We all know native-English teachers who avoid email like the plague, PTA meetings that get nowhere, parents who never volunteer for anything, non-rah rah parents who do a lot of work but don't get credit, etc.) I'm a bilingual, but not biliterate, parent at (I think) the same school as PP. The "disadvantage" is for adults who have no Spanish and who may have had unrealistic expectations of what a dual-immersion DCPS would be like. (It's never going to be a mini-WIS.)

OP, check out individual bilingual schools. Each one is different. No school is a magic bullet. GL

[Anonymous]

Your child's personality plays a huge role in whether any school will be good for them. For some kids bilingual programs are not a good fit. My DC shut down in a bilingual program. The teacher told us that in his experience this happens to about 10-20% of kids placed in immersion or bilingual programs. He recommended that we take our child out of the program and when we moved to a traditional program, DC took off and is a stellar student. What is great for one child can be terrible for another.

[Anonymous]

My friend who's a teacher suggested thinking about how people teach, rather than what (like a language) they teach and I think that's good advice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Your child's personality plays a huge role in whether any school will be good for them. For some kids bilingual programs are not a good fit. My DC shut down in a bilingual program. The teacher told us that in his experience this happens to about 10-20% of kids placed in immersion or bilingual programs. He recommended that we take our child out of the program and when we moved to a traditional program, DC took off and is a stellar student. What is great for one child can be terrible for another.

I thought about what you described. How old was your child when s/he started?

[Anonymous]

I don't know any kids that didn't "wake up" in the 2nd language a few years into it. You have to wait.

[Anonymous]

Yes there can be disadvantages. My child attended Oyster, many English speaking students had a Spanish speaking parent or adult in the home, my child was at a linguistic disadvantage and struggled with Spanish for years, as did many others at Oyster. (In fact, my child's Spanish was mocked by a child whose father was from Central America and who came from a bilingual home.) At the time, Oyster did not provide enrichment during the day, it was before or after school. I do not know if that's how they handle this now. I also do not know if the English speaking students are as bicultural. It's not for everyone. My child is now in high school and is very glad to have stuck with it!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes there can be disadvantages. My child attended Oyster, many English speaking students had a Spanish speaking parent or adult in the home, my child was at a linguistic disadvantage and struggled with Spanish for years, as did many others at Oyster. (In fact, my child's Spanish was mocked by a child whose father was from Central America and who came from a bilingual home.) At the time, Oyster did not provide enrichment during the day, it was before or after school. I do not know if that's how they handle this now. I also do not know if the English speaking students are as bicultural. It's not for everyone. My child is now in high school and is very glad to have stuck with it!

Is you child bilingual now? When did s/he start Oyster (I am assuming that they attended until high school, right)?

[Anonymous]

Because I have a strong urge for my kids to do better, be better and have greater options than my husband and I had. Our son's great at languages and it is a good fit for him. We supplement at home by hiring a Chinese tutor. I have his homework translated for me so that I can help him. I learn as much Chinese as possible to support him, too. I don't make ANY attempt to pronounce or correct pronunciation, but I help with reading, comprehension, math and things like that. I hope that I can keep up for the next few years, at which point we will rely more on the after school homework classes and tutors. It is a lot like needing tutors to supplement for any other class, but usually people don't need those until middle and high school. We'll just be using them longer. Middle or high school to start a new language is too late in most cases. That is especially true for level four, tonal languages.

interesting...is your kid having any fun?

[Anonymous]

A biligual school does not create a bilingual child. The children must be exposed to the language in a natural, non-school environment to really learn it. This could be study-abroad, or exposure to the language at home. Otherwise, they just learn the school vocabulary and responses. For the DC area, I would guess that students have more of a chance to become truly bilingual in Spanish, while those at French/German/Chinese schools won't really be bilingual, simply because DC has many opportunities to speak/use spanish. A second language is a nice enrichment, but shouldn't be the only reason you choose a school. My child attends a bilingual school, and after three years, many of the kids still don't even understand the classroom vocab, and are very far from "bilingual".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Because I have a strong urge for my kids to do better, be better and have greater options than my husband and I had. Our son's great at languages and it is a good fit for him. We supplement at home by hiring a Chinese tutor. I have his homework translated for me so that I can help him. I learn as much Chinese as possible to support him, too. I don't make ANY attempt to pronounce or correct pronunciation, but I help with reading, comprehension, math and things like that. I hope that I can keep up for the next few years, at which point we will rely more on the after school homework classes and tutors. It is a lot like needing tutors to supplement for any other class, but usually people don't need those until middle and high school. We'll just be using them longer. Middle or high school to start a new language is too late in most cases. That is especially true for level four, tonal languages.

interesting...is your kid having any fun?

Ditto! Sounds like a lot of work!

[Anonymous]

12:43 here. People wonder why students in MoCo perform better. It is in part because it is completely normal for children to receive outside academic help, even from an early age.
FWIW, my kids are very athletic and outgoing. We're all really active and love to work hard at whatever we do. But thanks for the ever-caring DCUM "worry" about their happiness.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:i just don't get it. if you aren't chinese, and don't speak chinese in the home, what's the point of sending your kid to YY? how will you help them with their homework? and do kids REALLY learn in another language when that language isn't spoken in the home? plus, chinese is a really tough language to learn. i'll be happy if my kid just takes up a foreign language by middle school, then studies abroad or something.

Yes, Chinese would be hard to support, but your child will have significantly more difficulty in becoming truly bi-literate in English and Chinese (or any language) if they don't start early in elementary school (there has been many studies that support the 3-7 yr old window). I have a friend who can speak, read and write in English, French and Italian. Her mother is British and speaks minimal French. Her father is bilingual in French and English. She was primarily raised by her mother. By attending a trilingual school from preschool until high school she was able to learn to write and read in 3 languages in addition to learning how to speak her parents native language. I took Spanish in middle and high school, but not immersion (I also studied abroad which helps with basic reading and speaking). I can read at a "8th grade level" and converse for the most part, but my accent is off and I can't write or read at the level of my friend from Switzerland or a friend from Montreal that is fully bilingual in French and English (with appropriate accents in both languages) even though her parents only speak French (she also went to an immersion school from 4 yrs old). I do know a few people that are naturally good at picking up languages and learned to speak one or two languages during high school or college, but for most people, that is not the case.

My cousin speaks, reads and writes English, Dutch, and French. She also speaks German and Italian. In the Netherlands, it is the norm to study that many languages. Her mother only speaks Dutch and her father speaks Dutch and English.

She went to an immersion school (but they don't consider it that....it's just normal to have school in multiple languages). That's how you learn.

[Anonymous]

Newsweek just did a piece on the benefits of bilingual ed -- http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/08/07/why-it-s-smart-to-be-bilingual.html

One thing I particularly agreed with in the article was the statement that among the outcomes of learning multiple languages is to cultivate an awareness of multiple cultures -- to me this is important that my DD grow up realizing we are but one of a million individual cultures with whom we need to coexist.