Mundo Verde - Check their Spanish

[Anonymous]

Hi, a Spanish native speaker here. Mundo Verde prospect parents, be aware that their Spanish level is not very good (in fact, it is pretty poor). I attended an Open House and some signs in Spanish were spelled incorrectly and the Open House information sheet was wrongly translated. It is surprising to me that being the bilingual thing its biggest selling point they got that wrong. I mentioned this fact to the woman that was in charge of the presentation and she told me that they done that (the info sheet) in a rush.... No comment about the sign.... Anyhow, my point is: I suggest you guys push to get some Spanish grammar / teaching quality checks implemented.

Otherwise, I liked the school, but that flaw was a breaking point for me.

P.D. Please, be sure that I am not a troll or trying to be critic with MV for the sake of it. I doubted a lot about posting this. I did it because I would have liked to know.

[Anonymous]

Another parent here who was very interested in MV. I have heard rumors that there have some teachers who learned their Spanish in college and were not fluent. There was a specific teacher who may no longer be there who supposedly "was uncomfortable" and "felt pressured" to teach in Spanish because she was not adequately fluent. I know these are rumors and who knows if there's any truth, but the source seemed credible. Anyone have any insight on this or on the quality of the immersion otherwise? Full disclosure- we're at another immersion and wanted MV for the convenience of the new location. We will stay put. I know MV won't miss me and is not hurting for students, but maybe some frank info. on the quality will help some families rding the fence. Also, I've heard the program itself is great.

[Anonymous]

I would also like to hear the answer to this. My daughter was just accepted into K at MV, and I've heard some not-great stuff about the Spanish taught there. I am NOT a native Spanish speaker, however, and I can't decide whether some Spanish is better than the no Spanish she'd be getting at home. I studied Russian in college with non-native professors, and it was fine to a point, but you couldn't go all the way. Do I care if my 5 year-old goes all the way? Probably not.

[Anonymous]

I have a letter from my DS school which is a DCPS bilingual school and the translation to English was incorrect. Verb tense etc. It was from a specialty teacher coming onboard.

[Anonymous]

Is it because you have different Spanish backgrounds? I'm involved with a community group of people from Chile, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Honduras and El Salavdor and at times things are said, read and written in different ways. I do understand your point and this is troubling for people trying to decide if they want to accept their spot.

[Anonymous]

That has not been my experience in the teaching of my child. Sometimes things aren't translated perfectly because every single thing is translated and the school often relies on volunteers to do the translating. The priority for parent communications is making sure everyone understands. There has been a greater emphasis on more perfect translations in the past year though with a couple parents volunteering a lot. These parent driven communications though are almost never written by the teachers or reflective of their knowledge. More often this complaint is that the Spanish teachers don't know enough English but the Spanish dominant are all learning English. All of these issues are being addressed but it is still a work in progress.

[Anonymous]

Should they hire someone who could oversee this. Maybe a school communications editor?

[Anonymous]

Agree that OP may be seeing Spanish that is unfamiliar due to regional/country differences. There are Spanish teachers who are not native speakers. A few native Spanish speakers have mentioned this as a drawback. Its been an issue and one they are trying to address.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Should they hire someone who could oversee this. Maybe a school communications editor?

They would need way more than one person. Every single email sent out by anyone is in both languages as well as all announcements, newsletters, the website, all materials, all meetings, all notes to meetings. Nothing would ever get done if if had to go through a single editor or even a group of editors so people try to do their own with assistance from amazing volunteers. If you are a parent who knows Spanish enough to fix up google translate, you will likely do it yourself instead of taking the time of the extremely busy volunteers. Yes, this means that sometimes things aren't perfect, but there is a common goal towards bilingualism and a general belief that practice is good for adults as well and that the attempt is more welcoming of a broader community than not attempting at all. Practice is good for speakers of either language, so native English speakers whose Spanish is not perfect may stretch in Spanish the same way that a native Spanish speaker may stretch in English. Yes, it would be great if written materials were all edited, but if they are for a parental audience, I wouldn't worry about the effect on the children so much.

[Anonymous]

It is a challenge to translate one from another. We experience this in our own family when speaking to my sons grandmother who is a native speaker and has limited English. How can the problem be corrected? If all the communication materials are bad, then who knows what goes on in the classroom. Some spanish or knowledge of Spanish is better than none at all. Our son understands it very well but doesn't speak it often.

[Anonymous]

I would prefer a good teacher who speaks good Spanish to an OK teacher who speaks perfect Spanish.

[Anonymous]

For formal documents that need to be translated with 100% accuracy, my understanding is that it is a long and iterative process--there's translation, back translation, etc. etc. I'm sure a new and small school like Mundo Verde does not have the time to be that thorough with each and every communication that goes out, and so sometimes perhaps things get missed and aren't translated perfectly.

I say this with no pony in this race as we weren't that interested in MV--esp. given the new location--and ranked them low (and also we are holding out hope for French at Stokes--I know, pipe dream!). Of course, I'm not sure about the extent of the translation errors, but would hate to see an immersion school unduly criticized when perhaps this thing is bound to happen from time to time.

[Anonymous]

Takeaway here seems to be English speaking parents at Mundo Verde don't care too much about quality of Spanish taught or learned at Mundo Verde.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Takeaway here seems to be English speaking parents at Mundo Verde don't care too much about quality of Spanish taught or learned at Mundo Verde.

Maybe, but how is it at other charters or dcps.

[Anonymous]

Native Spanish speaker here, just got in to MV. Funny, just this evening I read our welcome postcard and wondered aloud to DH about the Spanish on it. Not totally incorrect, just awkward/not accurate. Hmm