Admissions: Admission of monolingual
English speakers after grade 2
Teacher recruitment and hiring: Little/no
flexibility from state for teacher licensure waivers
to recruit native speakers
Staffing: Support personnel are monolingual;
collective bargaining issues that sometimes force immersion
schools to employ monolingual district employees
Curriculum: District level decisions
that do not take immersion into account, do not budget
for materials in L2
Staff development: District staff development
days tied up with non-immersion training for teachers
|
Admissions: Uphold policies (like
only placing students who choose program and maintain
balance of language-dominance in dual-immersion program)
Teacher recruitment and hiring: Provide
legal advice regarding visa issues for teachers coming
from another country; policy of “early hire”
for immersion schools
Staffing: Extra funding to hire support
staff who are bilingual
Curriculum: Implement content area
curriculum that exists in L2 rather than adopt materials
that have to be adapted/translated
Staff development: Exemption from some
required district staff development to be replaced with
immersion specific training
|
Language use: Signs, announcements
in English; unlimited parent access to classroom disrupting
use of immersion language
Specialists: Monolingual staff feel
marginalized when bilingual staff is speaking immersion
language
Classroom-community connections: No
attention to such connections
Staff development: No acknowledgement
of need to have immersion-focused staff development
|
Language use: Signs, announcements
in immersion language; limited involvement in the classroom
of parents who do not speak the immersion language;
established procedure for evaluating immersion language
proficiency of teaching candidates; conduct staff meetings
in immersion language; native speaking teaching assistants
to model language use
Specialists: Identify themes in the specialist’s
curriculum (art, music, phy ed, etc) where culture learning
can be incorporated.
Classroom-community connections: Service-learning
projects with speakers of immersion language to increase
motivation to use the language; use of technology to
access a real audience for students’ work; travel
opportunities for older students with family stays
Staff development: Mentoring for new
teachers by someone with high L2 skills to mentor both
instructional practices and language use; chaperone
student travel to improve own language skills
|
