WYOMING, MI – Godfrey-Lee Public Schools is planning to launch a dual language Spanish immersion program starting with its preschool and kindergarten classes this fall.
School leaders say the dual language program will help close the achievement gap between the district’s native English speakers and native Spanish speakers, who make up about half of the district’s student population.
The Godfrey-Lee Board of Education unanimously approved plans to implement the new Spanish dual immersion program during the board’s Jan. 9 regular meeting.
The program will start in preschool and kindergarten with a 90/10 model, where students receive 90% of their instruction in Spanish and 10% of instruction in English.
English instruction will increase by 10% as students move up a grade level, so that by fifth grade it will be a 50/50 split between the two languages.
The goal is to have students fluent in both Spanish and English by the time they’re in middle school, said Jessica Crampton, assistant superintendent of teaching and learning at Godfrey-Lee.
About half of the students at Godfrey-Lee are English language learners, which means English is not their native language, Crampton said. Additionally, roughly 80% of the district’s 1,400 students identify as Hispanic/Latino, according to most recent state data.
Despite having a large number of native Spanish speakers, Crampton said not enough of those students are proficient in reading and writing in their native language when they graduate high school.
“We have a lot of students who come to us from native Spanish speaking homes and because they have been fully immersed in the English language at school, they lose their literacy in their native language,” Crampton explained. “They might be able to still speak it and understand, but they may not be able to read or write.”
With the new Spanish immersion program, the district wants to make sure that its native Spanish speakers don’t lose their reading and writing skills in school.
“I think offering Spanish/English dual immersion program honors our families in our community because we have such a large Hispanic/Latino population,” Crampton said.
“One of our grants we have was called ‘Bilingualism is Our Superpower,’ and we really want to lean into that. Being bilingual is a superpower, and it is a strength that a lot of our students and families have, so it’s really important that we honor that.
Some of the other benefits of a dual language program include increased self-esteem among students, less discrimination, stronger cross-group relationships, and better global communication, Crampton explained.
The plan for a Spanish immersion program at Godfrey-Lee has been in the works for several years, Crampton said.
School leaders first brought the idea to the board five years ago, but it wasn’t approved because the district didn’t have enough Spanish speaking staff at the time, Crampton said.
Since then, the district has been working to attract and hire more Spanish speaking staff, including a number of native Spanish speakers, Crampton said. School leaders have also recently implemented curriculum that would work well in a dual language program.
“With our new curriculum adoptions we’ve done for math and English language arts over the last couple years, those curriculum resources also come in Spanish so we feel that our students are going to have an equitable education if they’re in the regular program or dual immersion program and we don’t have to work with a consulting company to provide materials,” she said.
The next step is reaching out to families who are interested in a dual immersion program, Crampton said. The district has already identified 17 preschool families who are highly interested in enrolling in a Kindergarten dual immersion program, according to information presented to the school board in January.
Two-thirds of the current fifth graders have attended Godfrey-Lee Public Schools from kindergarten through fifth grade, which means a majority of students would stick with the district for the entirety of the Spanish immersion program.
The new program will be available at Godfrey-Lee starting with the 2023-24 school year.
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