Bilingual schools offer new educational wrinkle

Diane Solis:

Inside the small classrooms of Lorenzo de Zavala Elementary School, first-grade students detail recipes, in Spanish, for "limonada," lemonade. "Agua, hielo, limon."

In another room, older students construct sentences, in English, with the word "malfunction" as they work through a Star Wars-inspired game. "My brain wasn't working," says one boy mischievously. "It had a malfunction."

Not missing a beat, teacher Charles Stewart tells a Star Wars comrade, "Cesar, turn his brain back on."

The giggles tumble out. But this is serious teaching and turning brains on is exactly the point. Teaching at this humble elementary school, just west of the Trinity River and a giant new bridge, is part of the most serious restructuring of bilingual education in decades.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at March 5, 2012 2:45 AM
Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom: Newsletter signup | Send us your ideas