Going Spanish

After phone calls, letters, prayers, faxes, and a few months of checking the mailbox religiously, I finally got it in the mail- Liam’s acceptance letter into the Spanish immersion program.  It was a long shot to get an approval for zone exemption, but it worked and we’re thrilled. We feel it’s a way to take advantage of our stay in D.C.

The program works especially well because half of the kids in the area already speak Spanish at home. Liam loves the idea of teaching his friends English while they teach him Spanish.  Reading, writing, and math are done primarily in English, everything else will be in Spanish. He’ll be at this school for 2 years. The principle says after 1 year kids are functionally fluent, and after 2 years the kids are conversationally fluent.  In addition to this specialty program, we chose this school because it was small, just over 200 kids, with above average test scores, and the lowest student/ teacher ratio in the district. 

The demographic breakdown of his school is: Hispanic 122 kids (53%) Black  103 (44%) Asian 5  (2.1%)  White 2   (0.9%) We aren’t worried about Liam being the racial minority because he’s gregarious and adaptable and luckily as a kid he hasn’t yet learned to categorize and stereotype.

Brady actually spent his first grade as the token white kid too. He was bussed for an hour across town to de-segregate Seattle’s schools. I'm sure this may have been stressful on his parents, but he has positive memories of this experience. In fact when applying to University of Maryland he wrote an essay on how this shaped his ability to accept people of other races and cultures. We’re hoping Liam will learn the same lessons, pick up a tangible skill, and get a multi-culturally savvy start.