02/08 La Escuelita Arcoiris
Interview and visit with a Spanish immersion preschool/kindergarten
Ashlesha and I visited La Escuelita Arcoiris in Squirrel Hill and interviewed Megan, the founder of the school. The school is made up of about 60 students in 5 different classrooms taught by teachers from all over Latin America. It’s an immersive environment, so everything they do is in Spanish. Over the next few years, one of their biggest goals is to grow the alumni after-school program to keep elementary-school age kids open and understanding of new languages and cultures.
“We don’t teach Spanish, we live Spanish.”
We learned a lot about the benefits of immersion at a young age — if kids remain immersed in the language, they pick it up and they are more likely to feel open and confident in their interactions. Learning about cultural things like festivals in the context of those cultures is impactful and can change mindsets. Traditional language classrooms can’t compare to immersive environments, and alumni of La Escuelita talk about their experiences in more traditional environments negatively. A new point we hadn’t heard about before was that privilege plays a big factor in choice and how students might learn languages: because the children at La Escuelita (or at least their parents) had some choice in immersing in Spanish, they are more likely to retain both Spanish and English and remain emotionally and mentally safe. However, for cases where elementary-school-age children from other countries are thrown into American classroom settings, because they’ve had little to no exposure to English and they may not have a good foundation in their first language (or opportunities to practice it), they are less likely to feel safe and learn/retain either language well.
Main Takeaways
IMMERSION
- For children of preschool age, “the kids know the Spanish, they’re able to tell you what the words mean, and just have a conversation as well.”
- For children/people in general who have been immersed: “They’re not fluent but they’re very open and confident.”
- Kids who stayed in the after school program for years: “I know those kids feel comfortable listening to Spanish, speaking Spanish. It’s those years in between 6 and 10 that the brain, if you’re still immersed in Spanish, you will then keep it forever. … There’s true bilingualism right there.”
- “Travel is fun and all, but I realized that once I stayed somewhere and settled, that was the experience. That’s when you’re really gonna learn the language.”
- “Immersion. Immersion for everybody. In whatever language you’re learning. It’s the best way.”
CULTURE
- After students graduate from La Escuelita: “We have several children who come back for alumni program and want to do Day of the Dead or want to do activities with us. It creates an appreciation for other cultures.”
- About the diversity in teachers at La Escuelita: “They bring different accents, different customs, different ideas. … [The students] appreciate diversity. So often with Spanish and Latin America, they tend to be lumped together, like “oh Latin Americans are all the same” type of thing, but there are so many differences between us. The kids really learn to appreciate that because we can bring in all those different ideas. Like Day of the Dead, we also have them listen to Spanish music, whether it’s salsa, cumbia, bachata, merengue… they learn to appreciate all of that as well.”
- About Day of the Dead at La Escuelita: “I will tell you, I think it’s one of the most powerful things because of the skulls, because of the iconography behind it that is happy… it’s never macabre, it’s never dark, death, a sickle that’s ready to kill you. It’s kind of funny and lighthearted. It’s not that people don’t cry, or they’re not putting up all their decorations and pictures of their grandma that died, the food that she liked, it’s this really interwoven thing but I do think, once again with these 17 year olds, they’ll still come to day of the dead. ‘I love sugar skulls! I love day of the dead! I love putting out a picture of my grandfather! I never would have done this if I didn’t come to Escuelita. I would never be talking about death the way that I do if I hadn’t have gone to Escuelita.’”
- “Culture doesn’t just come from top-down, it comes from the actual source.”
LANGUAGE & CULTURE
- “Language is culture. Language is a part of culture. Because of the language, because of the way you phrase things, the verbs and the nouns and how they’re arranged, because of certain words and where they came from.”
TRADITIONAL LEARNING
- People who have had immersion experience don’t react well to traditional classroom learning- they know there’s better methods out there.
- “The way we teach languages in this country is really lacking. … Really, teaching languages, we do it wrong.”
- “For a child’s brain, for a 10 -year-old: their self-esteem is so low, they can’t really speak… you want to make it fun and low-stakes, immersive…”
- “We’re not connecting children with a language in a way that’s effective.”
RELATIONSHIPS
- The most rewarding part: “To me it’s relationships. I’m a people person. Whether it’s the parents or the kids or the teachers, the people that I get to meet, it’s absolutely… my life was always going to be community-based.”
PRIVILEGE
- “A lot of my teachers… they have a different story of how they’re here and why they’re here. I know that some of them are not, they’re not adventure travelers and came to the United States. It’s completely the opposite… how privileged I am to choose to go and get to go.”
- Some cases need to be more sensitive, for example young learners coming into the US who don’t have a choice. And how young they are, how much exposure they’ve had to the language, if they have a safe place to be in their home language.
