Bilingual and Biliterate Students Promote at Junction K-8

Nine years of hard work have paid off.

The first 8th grade class of the Dual Immersion (DI) students at Junction K-8 recently promoted with strong bilingual and biliteracy skills they have been developing since enrolling in the DI program in kindergarten.

Students demonstrated their fluency in both languages recently, when they were interviewed by a panel of English and Spanish-speaking District representatives and community members.

Students shared moments when they felt proud of their bilingual skills, anecdotes about when they knew they were truly bilingual and gave advice on how to be successful in DI.

To the parents of children currently in the dual immersion program and to those considering enrolling their children in one, the students advised “Don’t give up on helping your children become bilingual. It will be hard work and they won’t want to do it at times. Just encourage them to keep going because in the long run it will all be worth it... even if they can’t see that now”.

During the reception following the panel, parents shared about their children’s experiences in the DI program. They were proud of their children for their accomplishments in both languages and truly appreciated that their children now had a way of connecting on a more personal level with other family members and friends that speak their second language as well as the advantages fluency in a second language bring in college and career readiness.

“It has been a privilege to watch these students transform from a class of shy first graders, hesitant to speak in any language, into these confident, well spoken, bilingual trail blazers, ready to embark on their next pathway to becoming fully bilingual and biliterate”, says DI teacher, Vicki Teshin-Anderson.