Why are so many families interested in Dual Language?
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Anonymous
Sorry, that’s insensitive of me. It’s just honestly I didn’t experience that growing up. Like anxiety came for uni, I had only 2 I was dead set on going to and if I didn’t get those that was it. But elementary school? Seems excessive. And yea you do get paid more in certain jobs for speaking Spanish. Teaching isn’t one of them lol but then again that’s not the best pay overall. I don’t want to be the kind of parent who stresses about preschool. I just want my child to be happy, healthy, and learn. I feel if you are involved with your child at home they’ll go above and beyond. I tell all my parents that they are their child’s first teacher and I absolutely stand by that. |
Anonymous
Thank you 
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Anonymous
A little political background for those who are interested. Fenty/Rhee and the DC Public Charter Board made the decision NOT to prioritize native speakers in immersion charter admissions back around 2006. They made this decision knowing that the Dept. of Ed had not interfered when states had offered priority to native speakers in separate charter lotteries. This remains true. YY admins actually asked the DCPCSB for preference for native speakers back around 2012, and were denied. The priority of Fenty/Rhee, and every DC mayor and PS Chancellor since, has been for charter sector to run citywide lotteries where high SES families don't have an edge, as they do in gaining access to high-performing neighborhood schools. The decision was misguided in helping language immersion charters fulfill their missions, because such programs obviously can't offer robust immersion without being able to attract and admit sizeable cohorts of native speakers. When I say robust immersion I refer to two-way immersion vs. the one-way type you see at programs like Stokes and YY, where students don't learn the language from peers, they only learn it from teachers in classroom settings. Without robust immersion, kids can't learn to speak languages well unless families where adults do not speak the target language well supplement e.g. by hosting foreign au pairs or paying for language tutors. Supplementing isn't cheap. I see no prospect for a change in the policy on admission to language immersion charters under Mayor Bowser. Maybe 10 or 15 years from now, a more enlightened and engaged mayor, or a re-constituted elected school board will see the light. |
Anonymous
My parents didn’t tell me the benefits, it was a requirement. It’s obvious in my family if both parents know a foreign language and one of them is a native resident/speaker the child should know how to speak the language. They didn’t do anything special (their perspective), it was part of life, no extra studying except for reading and writing. I think Americans really have a low bar for their kids, thinking it’s actually high. Knowing 3 languages is nice but fostering my creativity and independence is the best privilege they could have given me IMO. Can’t lie though summers in Japan being able to speak and play with local kids was indeed a privilege. I guess for me I can’t see why you’d want your kids to study a random language unless you can have them actually culturally connect and not just in a school. It’s not the same as going to Columbia, Spain, Mexico, etc. Thanks for your perspective, it seems you don’t have the mentality of the DL parents I saw at the school I was at for 3 years. Most of them were entitled and yes I’m going to say it, White non-Hispanic parents. There’s was even a school meeting bringing this up. DL parents get outraged easily, as demonstrated by many people here. |
Anonymous
OP should realize that learning languages is best young not when you are 14 years old or older. It’s much easier to be fluent and sound native speaking when you start anywhere between 3-5 years old and continue with it thru your education than when you are 14 and in middle school. Speaking from one who started in middle school here.... |
Anonymous
Huh. I wonder where you two PPs live? I used to think like you do, that as a healthcare provider in Montgomery County, I had a responsibility to learn Spanish so I could communicate with patients. Because, hey, 4 zillion people in the US speak Spanish, right? It would be a no-brainer to take Spanish For Healthcare, at a minimum. But a funny thing happened as the years went by. Every single week, I have to communicate with patients/families who speak neither Spanish nor English. Greek, Cantonese, Korean, Arabic, French, Vietnamese, Creole/pidgin/patois/French are the most common. Occasionally I'll get a Russian-only speaker. I have no desire to learn 8 languages in order to do my job seamlessly. Translator phone it is! |
Anonymous
I’m in healthcare and you are twisting what you do to be the norm. It’s not. Whatever you do interacting with these less common languages is not what the majority of us healthcare workers do. The most common non-English speaking group is Spanish. In fact, if you take a poll of English only speaking healthcare workers, what language they wish they knew, an overwhelming majority if not 100% would say Spanish. |
Anonymous
PP here. So where do you live? California? Florida? Arizona? Texas? I work in Silver Spring, Montgomery County, Md. in a large hospital. What I encounter _IS_ the norm where I live. A plurality of the entirely-non-English speaking patients do speak Spanish, true. But Spanish-only is not so far ahead of Language #2 and Language #3 and #4 that I'm going to devote much energy into conversational Spanish. Amharic, I forgot that one. My patients today spoke Amharic, Cantonese or Vietnamese. No Central Americans today, no need for Spanish. |
Anonymous
I’m the first pp. I’m in DC. Yes, we are a multilingual city and I have to use the language line for Amharic, Russian, French, Swahili etc from time to time but Spanish is all day every day, baby! And speaking the language makes an ongoing relationship with a healthcare provider much smoother than using some phone line... |
Anonymous
I used to work in Rockville and Silver Spring in an urgent care. Rockville we would need a spanish translator maybe once a day. Silver Spring numerous times everyday to say the least. In fact, the ancillary staff who worked there, most spoke Spanish (company was looking for staff who was fluent in Spanish) because too much time was lost with phone translation. Spanish everyday, all the time. I’m sure you already know that Silver Spring has a very high concentration of Spanish speaking people. |
Anonymous
| OP is 21. Years old. |
Anonymous
| I am someone who learned Spanish via immersion and am hoping to do the same for my kids if we get a good lottery pull. I am not looking at this from an employment perspective. I naively thought that my Spanish fluency would help me get a job or earn more but in reality I use it close to never in my white collar career (management consulting and then healthcare administration). I’m sad that I don’t use it more but there are just very few white collar jobs where you’ll have the opportunity to use it. I did interview for a few global roles where I’d be traveling to South America but ultimately didn’t get them because these companies were looking for native speakers (which are plentiful, by the way). That being said, learning Spanish absolutely improved my English language skills, particularly my writing, which has been invaluable. I’m seeking language immersion for my kids because I personally believe it will help them overall in language arts and provide them a more well rounded education. |
Anonymous
And has an associates degree, this explains a lot. |
Anonymous
Exactly, probably best to think of her like your child rather than admonish her. These posts about languages needed in healthcare are pretty useless. yes, we know many languages are spoken ESPECIALLY IN SILVER SPRING. 
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Anonymous
Because if you want to do a dual-language program, you need lots of teachers who speak the target language fluently. It is easier to find native Spanish speakers who are qualified to teach than it is to find native Japanese speakers or native French speakers, because there are far more native Spanish speakers in this country. |