Schools’ bilingual program a hit with students

Parents also appreciate dual-language classes, which could be threatened by Measure 58

By Nancy Townsley

The Forest Grove News-Times, Oct 8, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (3 Reader comments)

Chase Allgood / News-Times

Breanna Turnbull and Erica Loarca quiz each other using English and Spanish flash cards at Echo Shaw Elementary.

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Three years ago, when their daughter, Ellie, was about to enter first-grade, Gini Petersen and Jon Schnorr made a choice about the way she would be educated.

The couple, who live Forest Grove’s Old Town neighborhood, enrolled their daughter at Echo Shaw Elementary School in Cornelius so she could learn in both English and Spanish.

“We had heard about the language immersion program there,” said Petersen, an attorney whose husband is a biology professor at Pacific University. “We were excited about that, because our neighborhood school, Joseph Gale, didn’t have a bilingual program.

“For us, it meant giving Ellie a gift of becoming bilingual at a young age.”

Now in fourth-grade, Ellie is blossoming in Jamy Amaya’s two-way immersion class, where students learn half the time in Spanish and half the time in English.

Amaya’s class format is built on the premise that children are able to absorb and retain information – including learning a second language – best while they are very young.

In Ellie’s case, it seems to be working. The nine-year-old, who has expressed an interest in learning sign language and Braille, is devouring books in English and conjugating verbs in Spanish.

Her budding bilingualism motivated her mother to enlist a tutor to help her learn Spanish herself. “I have to keep up with her,” Petersen says.

But all that could be threatened if Ballot Measure 58, which seeks to restrict bilingual education in Oregon’s public schools, passes in next month’s general election.

Students like Ellie are not the intended target of the initiative, one of several put on the Nov. 4 ballot by activist Bill Sizemore. The measure would limit non-English speaking students to one year of instruction in their native language in elementary school – or two years in high school – before being mainstreamed into English-only classes.

Local school officials say that would end Forest Grove’s highly touted Two-Way Immersion (TWI) program that serves English speakers and Spanish speakers alike.

Mainly English

Rogelio Martinez, Ellie Schnorr’s principal, is in his second year at Echo Shaw. Bilingual himself, Martinez grew up hearing some Spanish in his home, but his parents spoke mainly English.

Now his daughter, Liliana, a first-grader at Echo Shaw, is in a TWI (commonly referred to as “twee”) class. He’s convinced that it will be good for her development.

“It’s that progression that I was looking for,” said Martinez, who taught at Echo Shaw for four years, left to teach in the Woodburn School District and returned to Forest Grove in 2007. “I love the way students respond to learning a second language, whether it’s English or Spanish. At recess, there are no cultural lines – that’s really great to see.”

Very popular

Echo Shaw, which enrolls 435 students in kindergarten through fourth-grade, is one of three Forest Grove grade schools – including Cornelius and Fern Hill – that have put a premium on bilingual education. Nearly 75 percent of Echo Shaw’s student body is Latino, and more than half of its pupils are considered English-language learners whose native language is Spanish.

The school offers two TWI classes at each grade level between first- and fourth-grade.

During one class period last month, Jamy Amaya funneled 23 Spanish-speaking and English-speaking students through a series of literacy centers, each focusing on a different skill: comprehension, vocabulary, fluency or independent reading.

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