Photo: White Bear Lake Area Schools
This fall, White Bear Lake Area School District is launching a Spanish dual-immersion program at two elementary schools. Matoska International and Otter Lake Elementary will each host up to three kindergarten immersion classrooms. The program, available to both Spanish-speaking and non-Spanish-speaking students, will expand with this incoming class through fifth grade.
“It’s really kindergarten in Spanish,” says Angela Nelson, Otter Lake Elementary principal. Classes are structured the same as the schools’ traditional kindergarten, with 80 percent of each day conducted in Spanish. The language ratio will change with each grade level to encourage proficiency in both languages; by second grade, the ratio of Spanish to English
will be 50:50.
“Learning two languages and being bilingual—what it does for a student’s brain is so critically important,” Nelson says. “It helps their brain learn in a completely different way.”
The program’s teachers and paraeducators are all native Spanish speakers who speak English as a second language. “It’s going to be a really awesome experience, not just for our Spanish immersion kids but for our entire school, to have this opportunity to broaden our own language experience, but also our own cultural experience and to share that,” Nelson says.
Area families have the opportunity to choose this option during kindergarten registration starting in December.
For more information, visit isd624.org.
