Anonymous wrote:I'm the PP who initially brought up the issue of teaching vosotros at Powell. I'm not against teaching it, but it seemed inappropriate to ask kids to apply it in their school work. I think one of the richnesses of the Spanish language is its variation, and kids only gain by learning how Spanish is spoken in Spain, in Argentina, in Cuba, etc. But they shouldn't be expected to speak like Spaniards. That, I think, is a mistake.

And for the poster who said "Usted is hardly equivalent of how English is spoken in Jamaica or SE DC (hear the prejudice there, they know the difference between street talk and how you address your teacher) or how French is spoken in Haiti (I think they recognize it is not French, and call it a patois). "

Actually, English as it is spoken in Jamaica is called English. And they also speak Patois, which is a different language, some say a dialect, called Patois. In Haiti, French is French, and Creole is called Kreyol, not Patois, and it is a language, not a dialect. To say "Haitians can mostly speak proper French when they need to" is totally inaccurate and actually denigrates their use of Creole which is a language unto itself, and most Haitians are monolingual Creole speakers. To say it's like a secret language that they can use, but otherwise speak and understand French is just as discriminatory as the poster who said that all kids should learn vosotros.

So I respect the person who respected my post, and I stand schooled about my ignorance of Jamaica and France and Haiti. But of course I was not the one who brought them up. It was the "how English is spoken in Jamaica or SE DC" that really lit a fire of fury in my belly. No one here is arguing for Ebonics as opposed to English in SE DC, and I agree that "Vos" is all over the place to the point that I cannot keep track. But I do truly believe that "vosotros" and the Spanish lisp have been recognized individually as anachronisms in Latin America in general since I started Princeton in 1988, because that was when I FINALLY got to learn Spanish having been forced to learn Latin all through high school because Spanish would hurt my chances to get into the Ivy League.

Now I hope it is a different world, and the reason I learned Spanish was actually that I met and fell in love with a native Spanish speaker in college, so my kids are bilingual but not yet literate but we are not worried because my husband was the same way and had no problem picking up the reading and writing of Spanish in high school. All of our kids spoke Spanish first and only started speaking English later, had a period of bilingualism, the rebellion of only answering in English when spoken to in Spanish, and right now what I care most about is reading, writing, and arithmetic - in English.

So I love all of this immersion stuff, and were I now able to do it over again I might send my kids to YY if they got in, but I guess we have always taken for granted that there is enough Spanish around and that eventually they will learn it in school, because with surnames with an accent if they fail to be fluent by college they will be ostracized, looked down upon, and teased by the Spanish speaking community they are supposedly a part of. But I have to say having older kids I care a lot more about their access to Algebra than language immersion.

Power to the people who do not speak Spanish who are trying to make their kids learn it, and to those whose kids do not speak English who are looking for a way for them to be literate and educated in both languages. But I do have to say having a child in calculus that the AP worries me much more than the fluency or disfluency in Spanish. Rosetta stone and a month with her cousins in Columbia can probably do more than I can in that area. Calculus? Have to rely on the school and my husband and have faith in my kids because I never made it that far in math......

So to the other poster who claimed to feel sorry for me: my kids are in a STEM school or going there thanks to my STEM husband and his genes and that will probably get them farther than Spanish ever would, but of course we will make sure that all of our kids are at the least fluent and hopefully literate by the time they go to college. But I guess for us it would have been Chinese or nothing, just because we worked hard to give our kids the same base as my husband - speaking Spanish first, and then understanding English but speaking Spanish until they went to school which was late because I was home. They can still sing Spanish songs and understand Spanish and we go away every summer and we just have confidence it will stick.

The academics of Spanish - real literacy and the ability to write - may come later but we care more about math and science at this point than we do about "immersion" and we kind of always have. It was only the vosotros and that ridiculous run on post that drew me out of lurk mode. I respect what all of you are doing, but for us, as a bilingual bicultural family, with kids who have the appropriate disposition and aptitude, we will always put math and science first.

This is not to say you cannot do it all, and when our kids were small there were people we knew pulling their kids out of YY because the academics were not up to par, but now they seem to be. I truly hope the same is true of all these Spanish immersion schools - DC and Charter, that they do not fall down on the academics.

The vosotros really got to me - very funny after all these years. Cheers and best wishes to all and good luck.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If I saw a math mistake on a public document at a school I wouldn't assume the math teacher is the problem. That is my point.

A more relevant analogy is this: If a school touted itself as a STEM school and you saw many math errors, would you be concerned or would you blow it off? I'm not OP, but I don't think OP is trying to bring down the school but is raising an issue that concerns him/her. It is an individual decision based on what you are comfortable with. OP is not comfortable with the Spanish errors, but someone else might be ok with it.

Our family is at MV--would I like all their internal communication and public communication in Spanish to be correct, yes! My point is the conflation of teaching and communications that are written by admin staff and parent volunteers and what is happening in the classroom. The OP has no evidence that the Spanish teachers are teaching incorrect Spanish, but clearly that is what this thread implies. Did OP check the teachers' Spanish? Lessons? Materials? OP's post implies no. OP has a right to question and I would be disappointed too if I read mistakes in English at a school that teaches English immersion; however, I would not assume that students are learning incorrect English in the classroom.

So to your analogy, if the posters in the classroom or math errors are generated by teachers and in the classroom at a STEM school, that would be a problem. However, typically, math is not used in everyday communication so it would be hard to judge. Language is more complicated.

Anonymous wrote:If I saw a math mistake on a public document at a school I wouldn't assume the math teacher is the problem. That is my point.

A more relevant analogy is this: If a school touted itself as a STEM school and you saw many math errors, would you be concerned or would you blow it off? I'm not OP, but I don't think OP is trying to bring down the school but is raising an issue that concerns him/her. It is an individual decision based on what you are comfortable with. OP is not comfortable with the Spanish errors, but someone else might be ok with it.

If I saw a math mistake on a public document at a school I wouldn't assume the math teacher is the problem. That is my point.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For me misspelling is not a minor flaw, it is pretty basic stuff. What it is more basic than teaching how to read and write? I don’t want my children to be taught by someone that does not even know writing without grammatical or spelling mistakes. (I am in fact very surprise with those that say that this is not an issue and that the school is good academically. How can it be if they do not know how to write?!)

Have you counted the errors in your own post? Does it make you illiterate?

No. It makes me a Spanish native speaker that is not (fortunately!) teaching English in an English immersion school

But the teachers didn't create the materials you speak of so your point is not valid.

Ok, then is totally fine. I am an elementary school and my materials have typos and grammatical errors..... (Sic)

By the way, some of the "errors" were posted all around the school ( for example, in a poster indicating that if you are late xyz )

Anyhow, priorities vary among parents. If you believe that it is ok that a school (who's biggest selling point is that it is a Spanish immersion school) has grammatical errors in its materials, then it is ok.

Nevertheless, for me this might be a sign that you don't care much about (respect?) our language.

I think if they didn't care about Spanish, then they wouldn't have created a Spanish immersion school for their children to attend. Regardless, if you're not satisfied then don't go. The waiting list is about 1,000 names long, so please get out of the way in order that families who really do want the school can go. Thank you.

Hi,

My comment was not against the school -or anyone by the way.

What I was trying to express is: why as parents do we tolerate mistakes in some areas but not in others?

I think is a question of priorities.

For example, how would you feel if the school had math posters that were incorrect or if they were teaching physics inaccurately?

Op clearly has a need to disparage the school without really getting to know about it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For me misspelling is not a minor flaw, it is pretty basic stuff. What it is more basic than teaching how to read and write? I don’t want my children to be taught by someone that does not even know writing without grammatical or spelling mistakes. (I am in fact very surprise with those that say that this is not an issue and that the school is good academically. How can it be if they do not know how to write?!)

Have you counted the errors in your own post? Does it make you illiterate?

No. It makes me a Spanish native speaker that is not (fortunately!) teaching English in an English immersion school

But the teachers didn't create the materials you speak of so your point is not valid.

Ok, then is totally fine. I am an elementary school and my materials have typos and grammatical errors..... (Sic)

By the way, some of the "errors" were posted all around the school ( for example, in a poster indicating that if you are late xyz )

Anyhow, priorities vary among parents. If you believe that it is ok that a school (who's biggest selling point is that it is a Spanish immersion school) has grammatical errors in its materials, then it is ok.

Nevertheless, for me this might be a sign that you don't care much about (respect?) our language.

I think if they didn't care about Spanish, then they wouldn't have created a Spanish immersion school for their children to attend. Regardless, if you're not satisfied then don't go. The waiting list is about 1,000 names long, so please get out of the way in order that families who really do want the school can go. Thank you.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For me misspelling is not a minor flaw, it is pretty basic stuff. What it is more basic than teaching how to read and write? I don’t want my children to be taught by someone that does not even know writing without grammatical or spelling mistakes. (I am in fact very surprise with those that say that this is not an issue and that the school is good academically. How can it be if they do not know how to write?!)

Have you counted the errors in your own post? Does it make you illiterate?

No. It makes me a Spanish native speaker that is not (fortunately!) teaching English in an English immersion school

But the teachers didn't create the materials you speak of so your point is not valid.

Ok, then is totally fine. I am an elementary school and my materials have typos and grammatical errors..... (Sic)

By the way, some of the "errors" were posted all around the school ( for example, in a poster indicating that if you are late xyz )

Anyhow, priorities vary among parents. If you believe that it is ok that a school (who's biggest selling point is that it is a Spanish immersion school) has grammatical errors in its materials, then it is ok.

Nevertheless, for me this might be a sign that you don't care much about (respect?) our language.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For me misspelling is not a minor flaw, it is pretty basic stuff. What it is more basic than teaching how to read and write? I don’t want my children to be taught by someone that does not even know writing without grammatical or spelling mistakes. (I am in fact very surprise with those that say that this is not an issue and that the school is good academically. How can it be if they do not know how to write?!)

Have you counted the errors in your own post? Does it make you illiterate?

No. It makes me a Spanish native speaker that is not (fortunately!) teaching English in an English immersion school

But the teachers didn't create the materials you speak of so your point is not valid.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For me misspelling is not a minor flaw, it is pretty basic stuff. What it is more basic than teaching how to read and write? I don’t want my children to be taught by someone that does not even know writing without grammatical or spelling mistakes. (I am in fact very surprise with those that say that this is not an issue and that the school is good academically. How can it be if they do not know how to write?!)

Have you counted the errors in your own post? Does it make you illiterate?

No. It makes me a Spanish native speaker that is not (fortunately!) teaching English in an English immersion school

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For me misspelling is not a minor flaw, it is pretty basic stuff. What it is more basic than teaching how to read and write? I don’t want my children to be taught by someone that does not even know writing without grammatical or spelling mistakes. (I am in fact very surprise with those that say that this is not an issue and that the school is good academically. How can it be if they do not know how to write?!)

Have you counted the errors in your own post? Does it make you illiterate?

I'm not the Pp you are responding too, but why the need for the grammar police on a forum? It's not writing a midterm paper or an email for work. FWIW, I agree with your snark in this case.

It isn't grammar police issue in this case, it is more meta. It is just demonstrating that sometimes mistakes are made. Obviously the PP is not illiterate, and most likely she/he can write perfectly well, but just had some typos here. The point is that the fact that there may be translating mistakes in some of the massive amounts of communications put out by Mundo Verde is not necessarily reflective of the teaching in the classroom. I can assure you that the teachers are not the people that are writing most of what goes out - other than the blog - as they are teaching.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For me misspelling is not a minor flaw, it is pretty basic stuff. What it is more basic than teaching how to read and write? I don’t want my children to be taught by someone that does not even know writing without grammatical or spelling mistakes. (I am in fact very surprise with those that say that this is not an issue and that the school is good academically. How can it be if they do not know how to write?!)

Have you counted the errors in your own post? Does it make you illiterate?

I'm not the Pp you are responding too, but why the need for the grammar police on a forum? It's not writing a midterm paper or an email for work. FWIW, I agree with your snark in this case.

Anonymous wrote:For me misspelling is not a minor flaw, it is pretty basic stuff. What it is more basic than teaching how to read and write? I don’t want my children to be taught by someone that does not even know writing without grammatical or spelling mistakes. (I am in fact very surprise with those that say that this is not an issue and that the school is good academically. How can it be if they do not know how to write?!)

Have you counted the errors in your own post? Does it make you illiterate?

For me misspelling is not a minor flaw, it is pretty basic stuff. What it is more basic than teaching how to read and write? I don’t want my children to be taught by someone that does not even know writing without grammatical or spelling mistakes. (I am in fact very surprise with those that say that this is not an issue and that the school is good academically. How can it be if they do not know how to write?!)

Anonymous wrote:This is a dumb thread started by somebody with little knowledge of a school or a vendetta.

Most MV spanish teachers are native Spanish speakers. In fact many of the English teachers who only teach English also speak Spanish.

In addition, for those who have boys, MV is the rare elementary school that has male teachers in every grade. Male teachers can serve as better role models than the typical female for most bo

I don't think it's a dumb question at all. If OP has concerns about the quality of the translation in some of their materials, I think it's entirely appropriate to question it and raise it as an issue. That does not mean it is a bad school, and I don't think OP suggested that it was. However, some parents have higher levels of tolerance for minor flaws and others who do not. For those who do not, this may be a deal breaker for them. I think this has been a really useful discussion.