A new Spanish immersion preschool is starting at the end of January at the Phinney Neighborhood Center.
The Phinney Cooperativa Preescolar en Español (PCPE) is designed to encourage the social, emotional, and physical growth of young children while developing cross-cultural awareness. This program is also intended to be a resource to support bilingual and Hispanic families in North Seattle.
The PCPE is designed for children, ages one to five, who speak Spanish either full-time or part-time at home with a family member. It will be divided into two classes: 1- and 2-year olds meeting once a week and 3- to 5-year olds meeting twice a week. The governance of the preschool comes from an advisory board made up of representatives from each of the classes.
Our goals are for our children to gain confidence and self-esteem by communicating in a Spanish-speaking environment as well as to develop a linguistic foundation in Spanish. We will encourage the sharing of traditions, values, and cultures of different Spanish-speaking communities through social events, fundraisers, and play-dates.
Classes will begin at the end of January, 2010, and will follow the Seattle Public Schools’ schedule. For more information, contact Rosa Urrutia, Registrar, at rosaurrutia17@yahoo.com or call 206-972-3127.
4 responses so far ↓
1 Kate Martin // Dec 8, 2009 at 10:24 pm
What the Latino kids need is immersion in English, not Spanish. As well meaning as this may be, not speaking fluent English is what holds Latinos back in many many cases.
The kids get plenty of Spanish at home.
It’s really frustrating to me that we don’t have a playbook that helps the Latino kids survive and thrive.
Bilingual is fantastic, but a lack of fluency in English is what holds the kids back and makes it so hard to teach them when they reach kindergarten.
2 Laurette Loera // Jan 7, 2010 at 9:08 pm
The majority of the children enrolled in this program are from multicultural households. As far as I know, all of the children speak english. This program offers children of bilingual households an environment where they can develop and explore their spanish ability and cultural identity.
We have been speaking spanish to our children since birth. They understand spanish perfectly well, but only respond in english. This is practially universal in bilingual households. Children typically will not use their second language because they do not perceive it as useful in an english-speaking world.
I shouldn’t need to argue the advantages of growing up bilingual, but the task for the parents is far more difficult than most people imagine.
We are so very excited and grateful for this program!
3 Laurette Loera // Jan 7, 2010 at 11:02 pm
Ms. Martin:
My brother in law, Dr Jose-Luis Loera, MD, did not speak a word of english when he entered kindergarten. He serves on an advisory panel (to Gov. Gregoire) that is attempting to examine and improve the achievement gap in the hispanic population.
To site language as the primary barrier to hispanic achievement is grossly simplistic. If this were the issue, then we would expect see similar achievement defecits across all immigrant populations, and we do not.
Furthermore, second-generation hispanic-Americans who enter the classroom already speaking english, still fall into the achievement gap.
One would do well to examine the effects of #1 Poverty, and #2 Cultural values (particularly toward education) on achievement
4 many // Mar 22, 2011 at 9:57 pm
Forget the politically correct answers to Ms Martin.
She is ignorant. Simple as that.
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