Does Latin do the same thing to students who are bilingual? |
I think asking to have your kid sit out a class is a pretty big request. The only time I’ve ever seen that offered is with sex Ed. |
They certainly make them take Latin. I don't know if they've ever allowed a student to simultaneously take an advanced section of their other languages. And regardless a bilingual student would top out pretty quickly, even if taking a high school class. |
It may not seem significant to you, but supervising kids in a study hall rather than a required class does take staff resources. And leaving them unattended is not allowed. I'm curious - where did your kids wind up since they didn't go to BASIS? How has their foreign language instruction been handled? |
huh? how does being required to study a 3rd language keep your kid from being bilingual? I know plenty of people raised trilingual, doesn't seem to slow them down. It's pretty common among the international set, if you have parents from different countries and then your kid learns a 3rd & 4th language in school (like, mom is French, dad is Dutch, kid goes to school in Netherlands and learns Dutch and English.) |
Latin's admins are known to be more flexible than those at BASIS on curricular matters. I know of at least one recent case where a 7th grade student has been able to opt out studying a second language offered by the school in favor of advanced home study in a language not offered. The family has had to provide regular progress reports and a work portfolio to Latin admins. That said, there are hardly any bilingual or ELL students at Latin - the number is miniscule and their language instruction obviously isn't set up to support fluency. |
Were you fully bilingual and biliterate as a preteen, and raised in the US? Or maybe even trilingual and fully triliterate? If yes, you'll understand me when I assert that raising fully bilingual children in mostly monolingual DC in a language other than Spanish is a formidable task. Some of us who speak a language other than English at home struggle mightily, day and night, to raise fully bilingual and biliterate children, particularly in tough Asian languages without phonetic scripts. We'll leave trilingualism to the Swiss, thanks. |
I'm recently divorced, shared custody, he resides in MoCo where our kids now attend school. In MoCo, public schools haven't required foreign language instruction for years. What the county does require, like many colleges, is that students pass a language proficiency exam to graduate high school. My oldest easily passed the HS proficiency exam in the 8th grade, after attending a heritage weekend language school (also in MoCo) from a young age. The language we speak isn't taught in MoCo middle schools, but is taught in the HS we've set our sights on. Once he's run out of appropriate HS language classes, he'll probably move on to college classes on the side. Our family situation isn't ideal, but it's good to have the kids in a system where one size doesn't fit all and thinking outside the box to support academic excellence is tolerated. I'd have gladly sent family members to take him out of language classes at BASIS with another family in similar circumstances if admins would have allowed us. There was never any need to tie up staff to supervise the bilingual kids wishing to opt out of required introductory language classes. |
Ok so why does this mean your kid is entitled to a tailor-made study hall at Basis instead of just taking French 1? It sounds like you want something really specific an unusual (advance classes in your native language) that's not likely to be at very many schools - nothing to do with Basis. |
Adams parent again. Stop taking pot shots at the PP who makes good points about the sorry state of advanced language instruction in our public schools. You're missing the point. BASIS is no different than other DC schools where language instruction goes. Our paternalistic ed leaders haven't progressed beyond forcing bilingual students to sit in beginning language classes for scheduling purposes. Our schools cling to a 20th century approach to language learning. If you're requiring a speaker of one of the world's toughest languages-- e.g. Russian, Chinese, or Arabic--to take French 1 when they don't want to study a 3rd language, they (logically) want to focus on perfecting a very difficult 2nd language (with or without a school being involved), you're missing the forest for the trees. There only so many hours in the day to study. The problem of weak commitment to foreign language learning is very much a US problem. Other rich countries mostly get it right. |
I feel like the paternalism in DCPS and DCPCS EotP is a lot less than when we started a decade back. But, yea, it's still heavy handed compared the better suburban districts, and even the better established NW DCPS programs.
MoCo, Fairfax, Arlington etc. mostly serve middle-class students. They have the economies of scale to teach multiple world languages languages to a very advanced level, along with the immigrant populations of native speakers. Each jurisdiction has multiple strong comprehensive high schools. Our near neighbors in the burbs been in the mode of making allowance for individual needs to support high achievement in a variety of disciplines for a long time. |