FLES Programs - Argonne vs Clarendon and Rosa Parks

[David Golden]

I think the JBBP program at Clarendon provides a better example than Argonne for the potential of a FLES program. I believe there are once-a-week school tours.

The JBBP program has been in operation for quite a while, and is what I think can be classified as a "heavyweight" FLES program. JBBP has massive parent support, especially in parental involvement in the classroom, and this is the the level of support I'd expect to see in an emerging French FLES program. Argonne is a fairly new school and I believe this program is very recent. And I suspect the Russian speaking households are primarily interested in getting their kids up-to -speed on English.

My understanding (and this could be wrong) is that Argonne's Russian FLES only features 1-2 hours per week of language instruction, delivered by a visiting speaker, which is roughly comparable in presentation (visiting speaker) and hours of instruction to that of Clarendon's Second Community's (the GE program at Clarendon) lightweight Italian language instruction.

In contrast, JBBP at Clarendon is supposed to deliver 1 hour of Japanese language instruction, by the regular classroom teacher, plus a lot of incidental Japanese language communications from the teacher.

That said, I agree with the observation that the language development is minimal -- possibly disappointing -- for "new learners" of the language; for these students it is mostly a cultural enrichment.

If Alice Fong Yu alternative school can provide an immersion environment while achieving the highest elementary school API for SFUSD, I think SFUSD can get more aggressive with their FLES programs.

As an aside, another program to check out is JBBP West at Rosa Parks. The FLES formula there appears to be a hybrid, featuring both Japanese language capable teachers and visiting "sensei" native speakers. This formula may have been adopted due to a lack of Japanese language capable instructors in certain grades, or maybe just another formula, I really don't know.

[Kim Green]

a few things to remember:

the JBBP program at rosa parks is probably the stronger of the two in terms of both the amount and quality of the language instruction (clarendon being the other). it is a sensei-led model, as opposed to FLES, and all japanese is taught by native speakers there. they get WAY more japanese than at clarendon jbbp. (i know from what i speak -- we attended clarendon jbbp last year for K before transferring to fairmount for spanish immersion in first.) sure, the kids get a lot of cultural exposure, but for non-heritage students, the language acquisition is minimal. it's also uneven (i.e., my daughter could write her name and sing songs, but didn't know how to say "how are you?") mind you, there's nothing wrong with clarendon jbbp. but just to give you an example: our K teacher, a fine teacher, was not a native speaker. she often had to ask the kids how to say something. it was the cultural immersion there that was truly special. and the skill at which they wove cultural touchstones into the standard curriculum (e.g., teaching math while they make origami or something).

also: alice fong yu is a one-way immersion model. the kids must test as native english speakers to gain entry. so its test scores don't suffer from the typical ELL effect whereby students have to test in a foreign language.

kg

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[Frank Murphy]

I do think that the district is trying to put more emphasis on the FLES
programs. The Italian and Russian programs are brand new, and the
recently combined Multilingual/World Languages Department has started
promoting the Spanish elements at McKinley as a "FLES" program. One of
the big problems with SFUSD language programs (both immersion and FLES)
is that the district doesn't have well defined expected outcomes (i.e.
how well will a kid speak the language, for both "heritage speakers" and
monolingual English speakers).

I do think that the Russian and Italian programs are the most relevant
to a French FLES. They're both new programs, so the comparison to what
could exist for French is very close. We're not going to get a school
with 6 French speakers at the drop of a hat. The Japanese programs are
25 years old; it'll take a while before any of these programs are there.

Frank

[David G]

I do agree with Frank that the Italian and Russian FLEX programs are
indicative of what a new program looks like, while the older Clarendon
JBBP and Rosa Parks JBBP programs reflect how it might evolve given
the resources available at SFUSD.