Amigos Bilingues: Bilingual Buddies

By Chris Huber

As students trickle in through the double doors at West View Elementary School in Burlington, many of them head for Room 116, Mrs. Lopez's class. Twenty-eight first-graders from English and Spanish speaking backgrounds huddle on the rug in front of a rolling whiteboard with giant lined paper attached to it. The bell rings to announce the beginning of the school day. Most, if not all, of the antsy 6- and 7-year-olds have found their places, sitting cross-legged, scrunched together shoulder to shoulder. A buzz of youthful energy resonates from the group in a mix of laughter and random words in Spanish and English.

Today is Spanish Day.

Anything teachers and students say to one another during transition periods, such as recess and lunch, and between the passing bells must be spoken in Spanish. Tomorrow they will use English.

"ŔC—mo empezamos el d’a?" asks Mar’a Moreno, a full-time instructional assistant.

They start by writing the day, the month and the year on the board. "Hoy es miŽrcoles, el 12 de abril, 2006," she writes in big, orange letters on the board.

Moreno calls on Rachel Omdal, near the back, speaking to her only in Spanish. Rachel attempts to explain with her limited vocabulary that she will be starting Girl Scouts next week, but she soon defaults to her native language, English. All the while, Moreno repeats in Spanish what Rachel says. This helps the class learn the parallels between the two languages without confusing one with the other. They gradually discern the meaning of a Spanish word in English by repetition and word association, teacher Valerie Lopez says.

Multi-colored bilingual signs, labels and posters cover every inch of the classroom. They even hang from the lights, designating specific learning centers, such as the "computers/computadoras," "art/arte" and "listening/escuchando" stations.

In effect since the 2004-2005 academic year, West View's dual-language program has become somewhat of a focal point of the Burlington-Edison School District.

"It's the program that provides the greatest amount of hope for improvement," Principal Craig Madsen says. "The other thing that just floors me all the time is [the students'] language acquisition."

The program has become popular in Washington as studies have proved the effectiveness of teaching core curricula in two languages, starting at the elementary level.

Elementary schools in Yakima, Olympia, Manson and Seattle have already implemented the dual-language model to accommodate the trends in immigrant and transitional populations in the state.

Schools that use this program tend to improve the test performance and subject comprehension of native speakers of both languages, according to Wayne P. Thomas and Virginia Collier's School Effectiveness for Language Minority Students study in 2001.

West View's school counselor, Diane Sue, heads the dual-language team. She says the program is modeled after nearly 50 similar programs that Dr. Richard G—mez, Washington state director of bilingual and migrant programs, implemented while he was director in Texas.

She says this program is best for a school like West View because more than half of its 470 students are Hispanic.

Sue says a variety of program models exist, but since West View has such an even linguistic and cultural mix of students, its goal is for each of the 151 students enrolled in the program to be bilingual and biliterate when they complete the fifth-grade.

Part of the reason students can learn certain subjects in their second language is the bilingual buddy system. Every two weeks, the first-graders choose a classmate who speaks the other language fluently. For example: Jackie, a Spanish-native, picks Rachel, an English-native, and Miguel picks Adam. They are each other's "expert," helping the other with class work they may not completely comprehend.

The bilingual buddy system is used for math, which is only taught in English, and science and social studies, which are always taught in Spanish. Sue says the aim is to have zero translation in any subject area.

During the yearlong planning period before the program began, administrators faced skepticism from some native-English-speaking parents, Sue says.

"[Parents said], 'Will my child fall behind in science and social studies if they're totally taught in Spanish?'" Sue says. "The answer is we make that information available to them."

Sue says that few parents opted their children out of the program, which requires a five-year commitment, before it started.

"When they come in [to the district], they know it's a bilingual program and they're very aware of the program," she says.

Rocio Michel, the mother of first-grader Erik Michel, says she has noticed the change in her son's learning abilities since the beginning of the program. She says Erik has made new friends through the bilingual buddy system, and he demonstrates much of his abilities in both languages at home.

"[El programa] significa mucho en nuestra vida," Rocio Michel says. "[Erik] convive con ni–os Mexicanos y Americanos o que hablan espa–ol o inglŽs."

She says her son gets along well with Mexican and American classmates who speak English and Spanish, and the program means a lot to their family.

With the first two years of the program nearly finished, Sue speaks confidently of the progress the school as a whole has made.

"We've just been getting great feedback because the parents see the progress," she says.

The only program of its type north of Seattle, West View's success has caught the attention of the neighboring Mount Vernon School District, Sue says. Administrators at Madison Elementary School are in the planning stages for implementing the same system, starting at the kindergarten and first-grade level during the first year.

During their writing time after recess, Miguel Gomez and Adam Manrique glue squares of paper with Spanish vocabulary words next to corresponding drawings.

Lopez lingers near two buddies who need help focusing, while Adam scatters blue memory cards across the desk and waits for Miguel to begin playing. They collect the cards within a minute or two. Miguel is the expert here, but Adam recites the words in Spanish as he picks up each pair of pictures.

Down the hall, Lopez's partner teacher, Lynda Gonzales, reads with two students on the floor as Rachel and buddy Allison Segura, sitting among a pile of books, react to a passage in "The Big Surprise."

Soon both classrooms will empty and 52 hungry first-graders will scamper down the hall to the lunch room. Lopez and Gonzales talk about the program's effects on cultural barriers in the classroom.

"They see each other in their language," Gonzales says. "There's a big emphasis on working together."

Lopez says she is happy to be working in this kind of program. The children feel successful instead of frustrated by the learning style in which they have been immersed since kindergarten.

"The kids are benefiting tremendously," Lopez says. "There's such a cohesiveness working."

Although the program is slated to show results by helping to raise Washington Assessment of Student Learning scores and overall academic performance at West View, Madsen says school administrators have only anecdotal evidence of the budding students' comprehension. Administrators can look at the progress of the students through their own observation, but they have no official statistics yet.

When the students take the WASL in the fourth grade, the district will have tangible results to work with, Madsen says.

In the meantime, teachers and family members of enrolled students continue to see progression among the kindergarten, first- and second-graders.

Oscar Morales-Rivera, a senior at Burlington-Edison High School and brother of kindergartener Julie Rivera-Hernandez, says he noticed his sister's improvement immediately. Julie is not focused solely on learning English, as Oscar was when he took English as a second language classes, he says.

"What I was busy trying to learn was English," he says. "I was just playing catch-up for a couple of years."

When asked where he sees the dual-language program in five years, Madsen says he hopes the district will have adopted a plan to implement the system into the middle-school curriculum. He says the district should feel obligated to the opportunity to continue cross-cultural and bilingual education after the fifth grade.

Even if the district chooses not to continue the program through middle school and high school, Madsen says the same students who are in the program now will choose to remain at West View, thus making it a school of choice. Parents will seek out this program for their children's benefit.

Lopez and Gonzales, along with Madsen and Sue, say they see the program working in powerful ways. Their students are becoming bilingual and biliterate, and at the same time they are learning to honor diversity, to value teamwork and to transcend stereotypes and cultural borders.

As Gabino Maclovio and Rachel finish gluing the arms on their paper cut-out hugging earth during bilingual buddy time, their classmates hustle to cut out the last hand and clean up their table.

Moreno announces that the room is not tidy enough for anyone to go home, and suddenly half of the students dive under their desks, searching for every last bit of paper and trash. Moreno voices her satisfaction and everyone lines up at the door.

On her cue, the class sings.

"Adi—s amigos, adi—s my friends. Hasta la vista, until we meet again," they chant as a goodbye to substitute teacher Donna Harlow.

"ÁV‡monos, hasta ma–ana!" Moreno shouts as they spill into the hallway on their way to the buses.

To students like Julie, this was just another day at school. But to her big brother, it was another day of progress for her future.

"It used to be 'read to me,' now it's 'read with me,' " Morales-Rivera says.