Immersion
Content
Filipino Immersion Program 1
Running head: FILIPINO IMMERSION SCHOOL
Proposal for a Filipino immersion elementary program in Anchorage Alaska Andrew Castro Pongco University of Hawaii at Manoa
[email protected]
Introduction
Filipino Immersion Program 2
Anchorage. It is the home of around 264,134 people (U.S Census Bureau, 2003). It is the city where we can read a newspaper outside on our porches at eleven o’clock at night, because we have the midnight sun, giving us twenty hour long days in the summer. It is the city where we can see the northern lights in the winter, covering the entire sky three hundred sixty degrees, disappearing, reappearing and changing color, while others who live outside Alaska can only read about it or see it through pictures in books. It is the city where we host the most important airport for international trade, an airport that traffics more cargo than any other airport in the world giving us stable jobs year round. It is the city where we can enjoy the fruit of the land once every year in the form of the Permanent Fund Dividend check, a check that comes from the profits of our oil companies. We can agree that we have a lot of resources. We have a lot of things to cherish in this city. We have a lot of things to be thankful for. However, there is one resource that is left untapped in our city. It is a resource that we would have never considered being a resource. It is a resource that we see, hear, and live with everyday but goes unnoticed. It is the gift from the Filipino community residing in Anchorage: their language. Although there are many dialects from the Philippines spoken in Anchorage, such as Ilokano, Kapamgangan, and Pangasinan, the majority of Filipinos speaks Filipino since it is the national language of the Philippines, a language that is heavily based on Tagalog but include linguistic elements from the different regional dialects of the Philippines as well as Spanish and English words.
There is a big and strong Filipino community in Anchorage. According to the US Census Bureau, for 2003, they projected an estimated Filipino population of 8,544 living in households, excluding Filipinos living in other living arrangements such as university dormitories, institutions, and group quarters. It is about 53% of the 16,070 Asians in Anchorage and 3% of the entire Anchorage population. However, I want to give you not only an idea of size of the population but also an idea of the cohesiveness of the community. There is a local public television program called FilAm
Filipino Immersion Program 3
Showtime which broadcasts news of events taken place within the Filipino community residing in Anchorage. Also, there is an exclusive basketball league with three divisions: adult, junior, and peewee. You can go to Rainbow Video in midtown, a video rental store that has a collection of over a thousand movie titles produced in the Philippines. You can go to the midtown Walmart, midtown McDonalds, the United States Postal Office branch near the airport, and the airport itself and you can see dozens if not hundreds of Filipino employees that communicate in Filipino, joke around with each other in Filipino, and talk about how they want to pass their language down to their children in Filipino. But for this paper, I want us to focus on the huge amount of Filipino students in the Anchorage School District.
As a Filipino child, I recall being pulled out of my home classes at Willow Crest Elementary school with my other Filipino friends and attending intensive ESL classes. As I progressed to Romig Junior High School, I remember meeting the other Filipinos who attended different elementary schools and the size of my group of friends expanded. Needless to say, this trend of expansion continued to West Anchorage High School where it seemed that there was an army of us roaming the school. Although it has been years since I entered the halls of my alma maters, I can imagine my experience is the same for other Filipinos in the school district. In 2004, the Anchorage School District reported that the second most spoken language of students is Filipino (Goldsmith et. al, 2005). So, we can assume that someone in the school district, whether if that person is a student, a teacher, a principal, a librarian, a nurse, or a superintendent, will be exposed to Filipino. With the size of the Filipino population in mind as well the availability of the language in the
Filipino Immersion Program 4
school district, let us utilize our resources efficiently. Let us draw upon what we have stored but never use. I propose the implementation of a Filipino immersion program in an elementary school within Anchorage Alaska. Considering the population of Filipinos who obtained post secondary education from a university from the Philippines and are qualified to teach but take up unrelatedto-their-educational-background jobs at Walmart or McDonalds, and considering the increase of potential Filipino language teachers from establishments like the Filipino undergraduate program at University of Hawaii at Manoa, there is a future for teaching Filipino-as-a-second language. Before I propose the implementation of a Filipino immersion program in an elementary school of the Anchorage School District, we need to understand two things. First, in order to understand how a Filipino immersion elementary school can fit in the framework of the Anchorage School District, we need a brief overview of the Bilingual/ Multicultural Education Program and how its roots began in order to comply with the federal requirements under Title VI of the Civil Rights of 1964 and the Alaska law statute, AS 14.30.410. After understanding the background of the program and its goal, we will see the noticeable problems between policy and practice. Second, I will examine how immersion programs address that problem but differ in effectiveness due to availability or lack of availability of language resources for students entering an immersion program in Anchorage.
Anchorage School District Bilingual/Multicultural Education Program
The requirement under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act states “No Person in the United States
Filipino Immersion Program 5
shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from the participation in, be denied benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” Immigrants to the United States fall under this jurisdiction and cannot be denied public services, such as primary and secondary education because of their national origin. However, due to the limited of English proficiency of most immigrants, this poses as a complex issue for educators. How do you provide instruction for math, science, and basic life skills for immigrants who possess limited proficiency in the medium of instruction, English? Also, how do you provide education for immigrants without denying their heritage and language background? As an attempt to solve this dilemma, the state of Alaska addresses the need for bilingual education programs. Stated in Alaska Education Regulations Chapter 34, 4AC34.101, The department believes that providing equal opportunity to these (minority) children through the establishment of Bilingual/Bicultural programs of education will provide more effective use of both English and the student’s language, foster more successful secondary and higher education careers, facilitate the obtaining of employment, tend to bring about an end to the depreciation of local culture elements and values in solving educational problems, effect a positive selfimage, allow genuine options in choosing a way of life and facilitate more harmonious relationships between the student’s culture and the mainstream of society. With these intentions, the state of Alaska passed the law, AS 14.30.410 that “mandates districts to provide in accordance with state regulations a bilingual/bicultural education for each school
Filipino Immersion Program 6
with eight or more students of limited English-speaking ability whose primary language is other than English”. This made it possible for schools in rural areas to open integrated cultural and language programs promoting Native Alaskan heritage, such as Cu’pik culture programs in the Kashunamiut School District in Western Alaska and Yu’pik bilingual education in Bethel, programs that draw upon its surrounding local culture. Following accordance with the state statute, the Anchorage School District implemented the Bilingual/Multicultural Education Program, a program that serves around 6200 students, 13% of the student population who speak a language other than English as their primary language (Goldsmith et. al, 2005).
However, after analyzing the current policy of the bilingual program, I found a serious discrepancy between the language policy of the district and the language policy of the state. According to Bilingual/Multicultural Education Program website, the program within elementary schools provides intensive ESL classes for students with limited English proficiency by pulling them out of their home classes. This is no different from my experience of being pulled out of my class when I attended Willow Crest Elementary and put into “bilingual education” class. I recall attending “bilingual education” classes but I don’t recall using my first language of Tagalog extensively or encouraged to use it. Similar to my experience, students nowadays can be pulled out for up to three hours until they “become more proficient in English and they are gradually mainstreamed into their homeroom classes” (Anchorage School District, 2006a) or how my friends and I in elementary school used to view it, “graduate bilingual education class”.
Filipino Immersion Program 7
Although the multicultural education side of the program encourages school staff to hold cultural events to promote awareness of the diversity of cultures in the district and with hopes that it will increase the self-esteem and self-image, there is no mention of providing language maintenance in the students’ first language or any development of literacy in their first language in bilingual education plan. This nonexistence of minority language use or nonexistence of the encouragement of use is inconsistent to the section of Alaska Education Regulations Chapter 34, 4AC34.101 when they state that bilingual programs “will provide more effective use of both English and the student’s language” (italics added). Without the development of a student's first language especially during the early ages of the student, they will lose that language rapidly (Wong Fillmore 1991; Cummins 1991). After a student loses their first language, they are no longer bilingual and become monolingual which is contradictory to the program’s name itself, “Bilingual”/Multicultural Education. Unfortunately, the student learns a second language at the expense of losing the first.
However, there is some hope. After searching through files on the Anchorage School District online database, I discovered the abstract of the “Bilingual/Multicultural Education Program SixYear Instructional Plan”, published in January 9, 2006. Apparently, this is a plan that is made to comply with the Alaska law statute AS 14.17.420 (b) that states, “If a district offers special education, gifted and talented education, vocational, or bilingual education services, in order to receive funding, the district must file with the department a plan that indicates the services that will be provided to students who receive these services.” In one of the bullets appearing the plan's
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abstract, the Bilingual/Multicultural Education Program will "provide effective teaching strategies in order for limited-English-proficient students to develop native-like proficiency in English as well providing students the opportunity to maintain and develop their native language (i.e., language immersion programs)" (Anchorage School District, 2006b). Sadly, I scanned the document and found no plans for any opening, expansion, or even a mere mention of an immersion school. According to the six-year plan, it appears that the efforts to provide services to limited-Englishproficient students are only more frequent English language assessment tests, more culturally responsive teachers, and improved English-as-a-second-language program. Perhaps what is more shocking to me is the implementation of English-as-second-language classes for parents which suggests that the district wants to encourage English interaction between parents and students and not their home language. Overall, there is some attempt to maintain or develop a minority student’s primary language. Three immersion programs that I know of that exist in the primary level: Japanese in Sand Lake Elementary, Russian in Turnagain Elementary, and Spanish in Government Hill Elementary.
Immersion programs in the Anchorage School District elementary schools
With the widespread belief in Anchorage that languages take time to acquire and a bilingual education will help children become mentally flexible by being able to think in two different linguistic frameworks, parents are eager to have their children enter immersion programs in elementary schools (D’Oro 2005). Sand Lake Elementary School’s Japanese Immersion Program
Filipino Immersion Program 9
has been around since 1989 and its Japanese immersion program is coordinated with similar programs in Mears Middle School and Dimond High School, ensuring that students can progress in grade level, Kindergarten to their senior year in high school, while being able to continue their Japanese language and culture studies. Students are taught half the day in Japanese and then the remaining half is taught in English. This has become a well sought out program for parents because participants in this program are viewed as “highly marketable” and “tend to be accepted in the top tier of colleges” (Gerjevic 2003). In order to enter this program, parents enter a lottery in hopes of their child or children to be selected and this process is the same for both the Russian program in Turnagain and Spanish program in Government Hill. Turnagain Elementary School’s Russian Immersion Program is similar to Sand Lank in that it provides half the day instruction in Russian and the other in English. However, the aim of this school is more focused on promoting historical studies about Russia and Alaska because of Russia’s former ownership of Alaska. Plus, the school is focused on promoting international relations with Russia because of its geographical closeness.
Although these two programs promote bilingualism, it is not for the purpose of maintaining or developing a minority student’s native language. With a low Japanese demographic residing in Anchorage, about 684 residents .002% of the Anchorage population (U.S Census Bureau, 2003), the policy of the Japanese immersion program is economically focused in regards to academic excellence and employment. As for the Russian immersion program, it advertises that, for Russian as a first language speaking child, it will “improve the child’s understanding of his or her
Filipino Immersion Program 10
language” (Anchorage School District 2006c). However, in 2005, only six students of the program’s students come from Russia-speaking homes (D’Oro 2005). This seems odd that these bilingual programs exist if we remember the Alaska law statute, AS 14.30.410 that “mandates districts to provide in accordance with state regulations a bilingual/bicultural education for each school with eight or more students of limited English-speaking ability whose primary language is other than English” (italics added). So it is unclear if AS 14.30.410 refers to those eight or more students as students in the same language background or just eight students who has limited English-speaking abilities regardless if they share the same language background knowledge or not. However, if we view the statute under a different policy, let us say, English-as-a-second language policy in the Anchorage School District, those eight or more students are clearly defined as limited-English-proficiency and that the Japanese and Russian program are not bilingual programs but rather foreign language programs.
Although I am unfamiliar with the Russian immersion program and have not heard evaluation from any people involved with the program, I do find the effectiveness of Sand Lake Elementary School Japanese immersion program questionable. I remember during my undergraduate years at the University of Alaska Anchorage, I befriended classmates in my beginner and intermediate Japanese language classes who attended the program. Upon discovering that some students had had twelve years of Japanese language instruction, starting from Sand Lake onward to the university, I curiously asked them why they are taking the current courses and if it is not too easy for them. If one of the program goals is to have “students to be functionally proficient in English
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and Japanese” (Sand Lake Elementary 2006), why are these classmates in class with people who only had one semester or one year of Japanese language courses as opposed to twelve years? The response I usually get is that it is too easy for them but they just want to fulfill the one year of foreign language requirements with “easy credit”. This led me to question why my classmates are not motivated to progress in Japanese language proficiency. After interviewing a friend who attended the immersion program, my friend stated, “the only reason why most students where there is because their parents wanted them to be there.” My friends also mention there were no classmates from Japanese speaking homes so my friend’s Japanese proficiency was developed during study abroad in Japan in high school rather than in immersion program itself. So I concluded that it was not the quality of the instruction or the exposed time to the language, but the lack of applicability and relevancy to a student’s life that made the program ineffective.
Aside from my criticisms and speculations, there is the case of the Spanish immersion program at Government Hill Elementary School. After facing possibility closure of the school back in the early 1990’s due to its high turnover rate of principals and teachers and the low district academic assessment scores and discipline problems of students, the school was in dire need of reformation. The school took a risk of implementing an alternative program, the Spanish-English immersion program in Government Hill Elementary. It began in 1996 with 25 Spanish and 25 English speakers in two combined kindergarten and first-grade classrooms (Blankenship 2002). Throughout the years, the program expanded in size and in success. By 2000, “the school’s
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California Achievement Test scores in reading, writing, and math had made the biggest gains in the district over a five-year period, and Government Hill was honored as the Alaska Bilingual Program of the year. In 2001, the school won nationwide recognition as one of the only six schools in the country to be awarded the National School Change Award” (Blankenship 2002 p.35). What made this school so successful? Because of the low rent housing, Government Hill neighborhood residents are mostly immigrants from Spanish speaking countries such as Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Ecuador, etc. This highly concentrated Spanish speaking population provided the linguistic environment for the immersion program. In the whole city of Anchorage, the number of the population of Hispanic origins is worthy to note. The U.S. Census Bureau reported that in 2002, there are about 17,066 people of Hispanic origin, about 6.5% of the population of Anchorage. The Anchorage School District reports that there about 1,741 students who speak Spanish as their primary language, the biggest population of students who speak a language other than English. With these resources available for the children of the Spanish immersion program, I believe this is what made it possible for the program to flourish and to win awards for excellence.
Conclusion: Filipino immersion program proposal
As for my proposal of a Filipino immersion program, I believe that it will initially have problems, mainly from the lack of qualified Filipino language. But as we take into consideration, a large of population of Filipino students who will gradually lose their language in elementary school, this
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not only becomes a question of what we can do, but also the question of what we should do. For the bilingual education policy of the state of Alaska, this proposal fits in perfectly well. It encourages the use of a student’s language while gaining proficiency in English. It will end “the depreciation of one’s culture” as stated in Alaska Education Regulations Chapter 34, 4AC34.101, because Filipinos will not view their language as a worthless language but rather as a means to academic excellence. For the bilingual education policy of the Anchorage School District, if they truly want to provide services that help students maintain and develop a student’s native language, then concrete plans should be made in effort of doing so instead mentioning immersion programs in the abstract of their six year instructional (and in parenthesis I might add). The immersion program plans should be mentioned in the six year plan itself. However, if the plan is to serve limited-English-proficient students by pulling them out of classes and putting them into intensive English-as-second-language courses until they are mainstreamed into English without development of their first language, then the district’s Bilingual/ Multicultural Education Program should be appropriately renamed to Monolingual/Multicultural Education Program or EnglishOnly/Multicultural Education Program.
After examining the immersion schools, I believe a Filipino immersion school will have similar success as the Spanish immersion program in Government Hill. Unlike the Japanese or Russian immersion program with ideals of future employment opportunities for children, the Spanish program was made to address the local community and its needs. With the huge population of immigrants from Spanish-speaking countries, we can be assured that the children in the Spanish
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program will find some applicability to their lives as Anchorage residents. As for the Filipino immersion program, I believe the Filipino community residing in Anchorage will provide the resources for the program to be established and to function. If our major concern for the education of children is for them to be bilingual, let us not think too far in their future like the good colleges they will get into or the good jobs they will get that uses the foreign language they studied. Let us think, in the immediate sense, about the children from Filipino speaking homes and how the development and maintenance of their first language will not only benefit their academic lives, but for the sense of self and that self within the community. As for children not from Filipino speaking homes, let us think about how they can achieve that cross linguistic and cultural understanding we wish them to have not only from text books and teachers but from the Filipino peers in their class and the Filipino community.
We recognize that bilingualism is needed. However, we seriously need to think on how to promote bilingualism and what we do to promote bilingualism. This how part can be answered if we think of language as resource. A good quote from the National Foreign Language Center sums up what I have been trying to explain throughout this paper, the United States has critical needs for genuine communicative competency in a range of languages, a level of competency that can rarely be attained by native English speakers in a classroom setting. The ethnic communities constitute a valuable and unique resource in producing true multilingual ability in English and languages that are essential to the national interest (NFLC 1995, 1).
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What to do in Anchorage to promote bilingualism is open up a Filipino immersion program. The biggest population of immigrants is Spanish speaking. It seems logical to have a Spanish immersion program. If we follow this logic, we should open an immersion program for the population group next in line, the second biggest immigrant population, Filipinos. If we don’t, there is an expression Filipinos would say in this context, sayang, which roughly translates to “what a waste”. Here a few examples of the word sayang in context. To put effort into making a bilingual policy in the state of Alaska but not having that policy followed in the Anchorage School District, that is sayang. To have children who listen to their heritage language everyday at home but not being able to develop it and eventually losing it, that is sayang. To have children go through years of language instruction but finding no purpose for it and ultimately not using it in their future endeavors, that is sayang. To have a language resource within our reach, to have a gift but to never open it, and to know that we have something useful but render it is useless, that is sayang.
References Anchorage School District. (2006a). ASD K-12 Bilingual/ Multicultural Education Program. Retrieved October 6, 2006, from http://www.asdk12.org/depts/cei/biling.htm Anchorage School District. (2006b). Bilingual/Multicultural Education Program Six-Year
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Instructional Plan. Retrieved October 6,2006, from http://www.asdk12.org/depts/cei/ download/6_biling.pdf Anchorage School District (2006c). Russian Immersion Program. Retrieved October 10, 2006 From http://www.asdk12.org/schools/turnagain/pages/russian/pdf/ Russian_Immersion_Flyer.pdf Blankenship, J. (2002). The gift of two languages: A Spanish immersion program brings Government Hill Elementary back from the brink. Northwest Education, 8(1), 34-39. Cummins, J. (1991). “The Development of Bilingual Proficiency from Home to School: A Longitudinal Study of Portuguese-Speaking Children.” Journal of Education 173:85-98. D’Oro, R. (2005). Russian rules: No English is allowed half the day in one-of-a-kind immersion classes. The Anchorage Daily News. Retrieved October 10, 2006 from http://www.adn.com/news/education/story/6108979p-5992692c.html. Gerjevic, S. (2003). Optional programs face diversity challenge. The Anchorage Daily News. Retrieved October 10. 2006 from http://www.adn.com/life/story/2714402p-2762296c.html. Goldsmith, S., Howe, L. & Leask L. (2005). Anchorage At 50: Changing Fast, With More to Come. Institute of Social and Economic Research. University of Alaska Anchorage. National Foreign Language Center. (1995). Heritages languages in the national interest. Washington D.C.:NFLC. Sand Lake Elementary School. (2006). Immersion brochure. Retrieved October 12, 2006 from http://web.mac.com/garrity_patrick/iWeb/Sand%20Lake%20Site/Immersion_files/
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Immersion%20Brochure.pdf U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey Office. (June 28, 2005). Anchorage municipality, Anchorage municipality pt. Retrieved October 6, 2006 from http://www.census.gov/acs/www/Products/Profiles/Single/2003/ACS/Tabular/155/15500U S02030000201.htm Wong Fillmore, L. 1991. “When Learning a Second Language Means Losing the First.” Early Childhood Research Quarterly 6: 323-46.
Running head: FILIPINO IMMERSION SCHOOL
Proposal for a Filipino immersion elementary program in Anchorage Alaska Andrew Castro Pongco University of Hawaii at Manoa
[email protected]
Introduction
Filipino Immersion Program 2
Anchorage. It is the home of around 264,134 people (U.S Census Bureau, 2003). It is the city where we can read a newspaper outside on our porches at eleven o’clock at night, because we have the midnight sun, giving us twenty hour long days in the summer. It is the city where we can see the northern lights in the winter, covering the entire sky three hundred sixty degrees, disappearing, reappearing and changing color, while others who live outside Alaska can only read about it or see it through pictures in books. It is the city where we host the most important airport for international trade, an airport that traffics more cargo than any other airport in the world giving us stable jobs year round. It is the city where we can enjoy the fruit of the land once every year in the form of the Permanent Fund Dividend check, a check that comes from the profits of our oil companies. We can agree that we have a lot of resources. We have a lot of things to cherish in this city. We have a lot of things to be thankful for. However, there is one resource that is left untapped in our city. It is a resource that we would have never considered being a resource. It is a resource that we see, hear, and live with everyday but goes unnoticed. It is the gift from the Filipino community residing in Anchorage: their language. Although there are many dialects from the Philippines spoken in Anchorage, such as Ilokano, Kapamgangan, and Pangasinan, the majority of Filipinos speaks Filipino since it is the national language of the Philippines, a language that is heavily based on Tagalog but include linguistic elements from the different regional dialects of the Philippines as well as Spanish and English words.
There is a big and strong Filipino community in Anchorage. According to the US Census Bureau, for 2003, they projected an estimated Filipino population of 8,544 living in households, excluding Filipinos living in other living arrangements such as university dormitories, institutions, and group quarters. It is about 53% of the 16,070 Asians in Anchorage and 3% of the entire Anchorage population. However, I want to give you not only an idea of size of the population but also an idea of the cohesiveness of the community. There is a local public television program called FilAm
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Showtime which broadcasts news of events taken place within the Filipino community residing in Anchorage. Also, there is an exclusive basketball league with three divisions: adult, junior, and peewee. You can go to Rainbow Video in midtown, a video rental store that has a collection of over a thousand movie titles produced in the Philippines. You can go to the midtown Walmart, midtown McDonalds, the United States Postal Office branch near the airport, and the airport itself and you can see dozens if not hundreds of Filipino employees that communicate in Filipino, joke around with each other in Filipino, and talk about how they want to pass their language down to their children in Filipino. But for this paper, I want us to focus on the huge amount of Filipino students in the Anchorage School District.
As a Filipino child, I recall being pulled out of my home classes at Willow Crest Elementary school with my other Filipino friends and attending intensive ESL classes. As I progressed to Romig Junior High School, I remember meeting the other Filipinos who attended different elementary schools and the size of my group of friends expanded. Needless to say, this trend of expansion continued to West Anchorage High School where it seemed that there was an army of us roaming the school. Although it has been years since I entered the halls of my alma maters, I can imagine my experience is the same for other Filipinos in the school district. In 2004, the Anchorage School District reported that the second most spoken language of students is Filipino (Goldsmith et. al, 2005). So, we can assume that someone in the school district, whether if that person is a student, a teacher, a principal, a librarian, a nurse, or a superintendent, will be exposed to Filipino. With the size of the Filipino population in mind as well the availability of the language in the
Filipino Immersion Program 4
school district, let us utilize our resources efficiently. Let us draw upon what we have stored but never use. I propose the implementation of a Filipino immersion program in an elementary school within Anchorage Alaska. Considering the population of Filipinos who obtained post secondary education from a university from the Philippines and are qualified to teach but take up unrelatedto-their-educational-background jobs at Walmart or McDonalds, and considering the increase of potential Filipino language teachers from establishments like the Filipino undergraduate program at University of Hawaii at Manoa, there is a future for teaching Filipino-as-a-second language. Before I propose the implementation of a Filipino immersion program in an elementary school of the Anchorage School District, we need to understand two things. First, in order to understand how a Filipino immersion elementary school can fit in the framework of the Anchorage School District, we need a brief overview of the Bilingual/ Multicultural Education Program and how its roots began in order to comply with the federal requirements under Title VI of the Civil Rights of 1964 and the Alaska law statute, AS 14.30.410. After understanding the background of the program and its goal, we will see the noticeable problems between policy and practice. Second, I will examine how immersion programs address that problem but differ in effectiveness due to availability or lack of availability of language resources for students entering an immersion program in Anchorage.
Anchorage School District Bilingual/Multicultural Education Program
The requirement under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act states “No Person in the United States
Filipino Immersion Program 5
shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from the participation in, be denied benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” Immigrants to the United States fall under this jurisdiction and cannot be denied public services, such as primary and secondary education because of their national origin. However, due to the limited of English proficiency of most immigrants, this poses as a complex issue for educators. How do you provide instruction for math, science, and basic life skills for immigrants who possess limited proficiency in the medium of instruction, English? Also, how do you provide education for immigrants without denying their heritage and language background? As an attempt to solve this dilemma, the state of Alaska addresses the need for bilingual education programs. Stated in Alaska Education Regulations Chapter 34, 4AC34.101, The department believes that providing equal opportunity to these (minority) children through the establishment of Bilingual/Bicultural programs of education will provide more effective use of both English and the student’s language, foster more successful secondary and higher education careers, facilitate the obtaining of employment, tend to bring about an end to the depreciation of local culture elements and values in solving educational problems, effect a positive selfimage, allow genuine options in choosing a way of life and facilitate more harmonious relationships between the student’s culture and the mainstream of society. With these intentions, the state of Alaska passed the law, AS 14.30.410 that “mandates districts to provide in accordance with state regulations a bilingual/bicultural education for each school
Filipino Immersion Program 6
with eight or more students of limited English-speaking ability whose primary language is other than English”. This made it possible for schools in rural areas to open integrated cultural and language programs promoting Native Alaskan heritage, such as Cu’pik culture programs in the Kashunamiut School District in Western Alaska and Yu’pik bilingual education in Bethel, programs that draw upon its surrounding local culture. Following accordance with the state statute, the Anchorage School District implemented the Bilingual/Multicultural Education Program, a program that serves around 6200 students, 13% of the student population who speak a language other than English as their primary language (Goldsmith et. al, 2005).
However, after analyzing the current policy of the bilingual program, I found a serious discrepancy between the language policy of the district and the language policy of the state. According to Bilingual/Multicultural Education Program website, the program within elementary schools provides intensive ESL classes for students with limited English proficiency by pulling them out of their home classes. This is no different from my experience of being pulled out of my class when I attended Willow Crest Elementary and put into “bilingual education” class. I recall attending “bilingual education” classes but I don’t recall using my first language of Tagalog extensively or encouraged to use it. Similar to my experience, students nowadays can be pulled out for up to three hours until they “become more proficient in English and they are gradually mainstreamed into their homeroom classes” (Anchorage School District, 2006a) or how my friends and I in elementary school used to view it, “graduate bilingual education class”.
Filipino Immersion Program 7
Although the multicultural education side of the program encourages school staff to hold cultural events to promote awareness of the diversity of cultures in the district and with hopes that it will increase the self-esteem and self-image, there is no mention of providing language maintenance in the students’ first language or any development of literacy in their first language in bilingual education plan. This nonexistence of minority language use or nonexistence of the encouragement of use is inconsistent to the section of Alaska Education Regulations Chapter 34, 4AC34.101 when they state that bilingual programs “will provide more effective use of both English and the student’s language” (italics added). Without the development of a student's first language especially during the early ages of the student, they will lose that language rapidly (Wong Fillmore 1991; Cummins 1991). After a student loses their first language, they are no longer bilingual and become monolingual which is contradictory to the program’s name itself, “Bilingual”/Multicultural Education. Unfortunately, the student learns a second language at the expense of losing the first.
However, there is some hope. After searching through files on the Anchorage School District online database, I discovered the abstract of the “Bilingual/Multicultural Education Program SixYear Instructional Plan”, published in January 9, 2006. Apparently, this is a plan that is made to comply with the Alaska law statute AS 14.17.420 (b) that states, “If a district offers special education, gifted and talented education, vocational, or bilingual education services, in order to receive funding, the district must file with the department a plan that indicates the services that will be provided to students who receive these services.” In one of the bullets appearing the plan's
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abstract, the Bilingual/Multicultural Education Program will "provide effective teaching strategies in order for limited-English-proficient students to develop native-like proficiency in English as well providing students the opportunity to maintain and develop their native language (i.e., language immersion programs)" (Anchorage School District, 2006b). Sadly, I scanned the document and found no plans for any opening, expansion, or even a mere mention of an immersion school. According to the six-year plan, it appears that the efforts to provide services to limited-Englishproficient students are only more frequent English language assessment tests, more culturally responsive teachers, and improved English-as-a-second-language program. Perhaps what is more shocking to me is the implementation of English-as-second-language classes for parents which suggests that the district wants to encourage English interaction between parents and students and not their home language. Overall, there is some attempt to maintain or develop a minority student’s primary language. Three immersion programs that I know of that exist in the primary level: Japanese in Sand Lake Elementary, Russian in Turnagain Elementary, and Spanish in Government Hill Elementary.
Immersion programs in the Anchorage School District elementary schools
With the widespread belief in Anchorage that languages take time to acquire and a bilingual education will help children become mentally flexible by being able to think in two different linguistic frameworks, parents are eager to have their children enter immersion programs in elementary schools (D’Oro 2005). Sand Lake Elementary School’s Japanese Immersion Program
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has been around since 1989 and its Japanese immersion program is coordinated with similar programs in Mears Middle School and Dimond High School, ensuring that students can progress in grade level, Kindergarten to their senior year in high school, while being able to continue their Japanese language and culture studies. Students are taught half the day in Japanese and then the remaining half is taught in English. This has become a well sought out program for parents because participants in this program are viewed as “highly marketable” and “tend to be accepted in the top tier of colleges” (Gerjevic 2003). In order to enter this program, parents enter a lottery in hopes of their child or children to be selected and this process is the same for both the Russian program in Turnagain and Spanish program in Government Hill. Turnagain Elementary School’s Russian Immersion Program is similar to Sand Lank in that it provides half the day instruction in Russian and the other in English. However, the aim of this school is more focused on promoting historical studies about Russia and Alaska because of Russia’s former ownership of Alaska. Plus, the school is focused on promoting international relations with Russia because of its geographical closeness.
Although these two programs promote bilingualism, it is not for the purpose of maintaining or developing a minority student’s native language. With a low Japanese demographic residing in Anchorage, about 684 residents .002% of the Anchorage population (U.S Census Bureau, 2003), the policy of the Japanese immersion program is economically focused in regards to academic excellence and employment. As for the Russian immersion program, it advertises that, for Russian as a first language speaking child, it will “improve the child’s understanding of his or her
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language” (Anchorage School District 2006c). However, in 2005, only six students of the program’s students come from Russia-speaking homes (D’Oro 2005). This seems odd that these bilingual programs exist if we remember the Alaska law statute, AS 14.30.410 that “mandates districts to provide in accordance with state regulations a bilingual/bicultural education for each school with eight or more students of limited English-speaking ability whose primary language is other than English” (italics added). So it is unclear if AS 14.30.410 refers to those eight or more students as students in the same language background or just eight students who has limited English-speaking abilities regardless if they share the same language background knowledge or not. However, if we view the statute under a different policy, let us say, English-as-a-second language policy in the Anchorage School District, those eight or more students are clearly defined as limited-English-proficiency and that the Japanese and Russian program are not bilingual programs but rather foreign language programs.
Although I am unfamiliar with the Russian immersion program and have not heard evaluation from any people involved with the program, I do find the effectiveness of Sand Lake Elementary School Japanese immersion program questionable. I remember during my undergraduate years at the University of Alaska Anchorage, I befriended classmates in my beginner and intermediate Japanese language classes who attended the program. Upon discovering that some students had had twelve years of Japanese language instruction, starting from Sand Lake onward to the university, I curiously asked them why they are taking the current courses and if it is not too easy for them. If one of the program goals is to have “students to be functionally proficient in English
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and Japanese” (Sand Lake Elementary 2006), why are these classmates in class with people who only had one semester or one year of Japanese language courses as opposed to twelve years? The response I usually get is that it is too easy for them but they just want to fulfill the one year of foreign language requirements with “easy credit”. This led me to question why my classmates are not motivated to progress in Japanese language proficiency. After interviewing a friend who attended the immersion program, my friend stated, “the only reason why most students where there is because their parents wanted them to be there.” My friends also mention there were no classmates from Japanese speaking homes so my friend’s Japanese proficiency was developed during study abroad in Japan in high school rather than in immersion program itself. So I concluded that it was not the quality of the instruction or the exposed time to the language, but the lack of applicability and relevancy to a student’s life that made the program ineffective.
Aside from my criticisms and speculations, there is the case of the Spanish immersion program at Government Hill Elementary School. After facing possibility closure of the school back in the early 1990’s due to its high turnover rate of principals and teachers and the low district academic assessment scores and discipline problems of students, the school was in dire need of reformation. The school took a risk of implementing an alternative program, the Spanish-English immersion program in Government Hill Elementary. It began in 1996 with 25 Spanish and 25 English speakers in two combined kindergarten and first-grade classrooms (Blankenship 2002). Throughout the years, the program expanded in size and in success. By 2000, “the school’s
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California Achievement Test scores in reading, writing, and math had made the biggest gains in the district over a five-year period, and Government Hill was honored as the Alaska Bilingual Program of the year. In 2001, the school won nationwide recognition as one of the only six schools in the country to be awarded the National School Change Award” (Blankenship 2002 p.35). What made this school so successful? Because of the low rent housing, Government Hill neighborhood residents are mostly immigrants from Spanish speaking countries such as Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Ecuador, etc. This highly concentrated Spanish speaking population provided the linguistic environment for the immersion program. In the whole city of Anchorage, the number of the population of Hispanic origins is worthy to note. The U.S. Census Bureau reported that in 2002, there are about 17,066 people of Hispanic origin, about 6.5% of the population of Anchorage. The Anchorage School District reports that there about 1,741 students who speak Spanish as their primary language, the biggest population of students who speak a language other than English. With these resources available for the children of the Spanish immersion program, I believe this is what made it possible for the program to flourish and to win awards for excellence.
Conclusion: Filipino immersion program proposal
As for my proposal of a Filipino immersion program, I believe that it will initially have problems, mainly from the lack of qualified Filipino language. But as we take into consideration, a large of population of Filipino students who will gradually lose their language in elementary school, this
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not only becomes a question of what we can do, but also the question of what we should do. For the bilingual education policy of the state of Alaska, this proposal fits in perfectly well. It encourages the use of a student’s language while gaining proficiency in English. It will end “the depreciation of one’s culture” as stated in Alaska Education Regulations Chapter 34, 4AC34.101, because Filipinos will not view their language as a worthless language but rather as a means to academic excellence. For the bilingual education policy of the Anchorage School District, if they truly want to provide services that help students maintain and develop a student’s native language, then concrete plans should be made in effort of doing so instead mentioning immersion programs in the abstract of their six year instructional (and in parenthesis I might add). The immersion program plans should be mentioned in the six year plan itself. However, if the plan is to serve limited-English-proficient students by pulling them out of classes and putting them into intensive English-as-second-language courses until they are mainstreamed into English without development of their first language, then the district’s Bilingual/ Multicultural Education Program should be appropriately renamed to Monolingual/Multicultural Education Program or EnglishOnly/Multicultural Education Program.
After examining the immersion schools, I believe a Filipino immersion school will have similar success as the Spanish immersion program in Government Hill. Unlike the Japanese or Russian immersion program with ideals of future employment opportunities for children, the Spanish program was made to address the local community and its needs. With the huge population of immigrants from Spanish-speaking countries, we can be assured that the children in the Spanish
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program will find some applicability to their lives as Anchorage residents. As for the Filipino immersion program, I believe the Filipino community residing in Anchorage will provide the resources for the program to be established and to function. If our major concern for the education of children is for them to be bilingual, let us not think too far in their future like the good colleges they will get into or the good jobs they will get that uses the foreign language they studied. Let us think, in the immediate sense, about the children from Filipino speaking homes and how the development and maintenance of their first language will not only benefit their academic lives, but for the sense of self and that self within the community. As for children not from Filipino speaking homes, let us think about how they can achieve that cross linguistic and cultural understanding we wish them to have not only from text books and teachers but from the Filipino peers in their class and the Filipino community.
We recognize that bilingualism is needed. However, we seriously need to think on how to promote bilingualism and what we do to promote bilingualism. This how part can be answered if we think of language as resource. A good quote from the National Foreign Language Center sums up what I have been trying to explain throughout this paper, the United States has critical needs for genuine communicative competency in a range of languages, a level of competency that can rarely be attained by native English speakers in a classroom setting. The ethnic communities constitute a valuable and unique resource in producing true multilingual ability in English and languages that are essential to the national interest (NFLC 1995, 1).
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What to do in Anchorage to promote bilingualism is open up a Filipino immersion program. The biggest population of immigrants is Spanish speaking. It seems logical to have a Spanish immersion program. If we follow this logic, we should open an immersion program for the population group next in line, the second biggest immigrant population, Filipinos. If we don’t, there is an expression Filipinos would say in this context, sayang, which roughly translates to “what a waste”. Here a few examples of the word sayang in context. To put effort into making a bilingual policy in the state of Alaska but not having that policy followed in the Anchorage School District, that is sayang. To have children who listen to their heritage language everyday at home but not being able to develop it and eventually losing it, that is sayang. To have children go through years of language instruction but finding no purpose for it and ultimately not using it in their future endeavors, that is sayang. To have a language resource within our reach, to have a gift but to never open it, and to know that we have something useful but render it is useless, that is sayang.
References Anchorage School District. (2006a). ASD K-12 Bilingual/ Multicultural Education Program. Retrieved October 6, 2006, from http://www.asdk12.org/depts/cei/biling.htm Anchorage School District. (2006b). Bilingual/Multicultural Education Program Six-Year
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Instructional Plan. Retrieved October 6,2006, from http://www.asdk12.org/depts/cei/ download/6_biling.pdf Anchorage School District (2006c). Russian Immersion Program. Retrieved October 10, 2006 From http://www.asdk12.org/schools/turnagain/pages/russian/pdf/ Russian_Immersion_Flyer.pdf Blankenship, J. (2002). The gift of two languages: A Spanish immersion program brings Government Hill Elementary back from the brink. Northwest Education, 8(1), 34-39. Cummins, J. (1991). “The Development of Bilingual Proficiency from Home to School: A Longitudinal Study of Portuguese-Speaking Children.” Journal of Education 173:85-98. D’Oro, R. (2005). Russian rules: No English is allowed half the day in one-of-a-kind immersion classes. The Anchorage Daily News. Retrieved October 10, 2006 from http://www.adn.com/news/education/story/6108979p-5992692c.html. Gerjevic, S. (2003). Optional programs face diversity challenge. The Anchorage Daily News. Retrieved October 10. 2006 from http://www.adn.com/life/story/2714402p-2762296c.html. Goldsmith, S., Howe, L. & Leask L. (2005). Anchorage At 50: Changing Fast, With More to Come. Institute of Social and Economic Research. University of Alaska Anchorage. National Foreign Language Center. (1995). Heritages languages in the national interest. Washington D.C.:NFLC. Sand Lake Elementary School. (2006). Immersion brochure. Retrieved October 12, 2006 from http://web.mac.com/garrity_patrick/iWeb/Sand%20Lake%20Site/Immersion_files/
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Immersion%20Brochure.pdf U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey Office. (June 28, 2005). Anchorage municipality, Anchorage municipality pt. Retrieved October 6, 2006 from http://www.census.gov/acs/www/Products/Profiles/Single/2003/ACS/Tabular/155/15500U S02030000201.htm Wong Fillmore, L. 1991. “When Learning a Second Language Means Losing the First.” Early Childhood Research Quarterly 6: 323-46.
