Coming from another country to the US without knowing English is a problem for everyone, but this situation gets more complicated if we're talking of kids because when they arrive, they must be able to understand the classes in order to acquire knowledge.
I realized that in the US the government is very involved to solve this problem and that's why it provides help and resources to the families who have just arrived to the country. Thanks to the visit in Kennewick Public Schools and the lecture of Mea Moore at the Professional Educator Standards Board I've been able to know which are the steps that must be done for the newcomer pupils to reach an English level that allow them to follow the classes without problem. It's a four-degree system in which the student exceeds levels as his English is improving; it is supposed to last four years (one degree per year) but it may vary depending on the needs of each student. I really think that's a good restraint because in this way, there are some specialized teachers that care about the progress of the children and they ensure the learning of the language.
Being able to listen some experiences of people who had serious problems for adapting themselves in the US because of the language (for example in Jacob's Well, in the Parents Refugee Panel or in the Global Neighborhood) made me realized how difficult it is for the newcomers to reinstall their lives in a different place, as well as, it helped me to be aware of the real problems which they have to cope with in their daily life.
In Spain, the situation is quite different; there is not much help. When an immigrant child arrive in the school and he doesn't know the language he has to put all his effort to understand the class content by himself; of course he receives help from the teacher and specialized staff who take him out of the regular classroom to practice with the fields he has more difficulties (spelling, pronunciation…). But it's not enough; what's more, this practice has lots of detractors who claim that's a bad system because while the newcomers are in these "special classes" they're missing the mainstream curriculum, so they will be always behind the rest.
Sincerely, I share the two points of view, I mean I think that the students who can't understand the language must receive support and special classes but I also agree that they shouldn't miss the regular class content. That's why I believe that the best practice is to do extra classes after the school program; in this way they receive the help that fits with their needs but they aren't in disadvantage.
Compared with my home country, the main difference is that Spain doesn't have a general plan to cope with this problem as within the US, but instead, each school has its particular program. That's an advantage, because as we know, what works in a child may not work for the other, so in this way, the education is more individualized and focused on each student and his needs.
Once again, I realized that here in the US the community is more involved with the problems that affect the population and that's why there are centers such as Jacob's Well or the Global Neighborhood that offer help for the people with few resources.
Related to this problem, we can talk about the bilingual education. In America there are some schools which use this methodology to promote the learning of two languages (most of them English and Spanish). I think that's a really good idea because there some reports (Laura Ann Pettito, 2000) that show that the children who know more than one language, has a higher IQ level as well as is more prepared to front complex problems in the future.
The ways to reach this goal are different depending on the school methodology: the pupils can be mixed by their mother tongue (so when they interact they must know the two languages), or the teacher can teach half of the subjects in Spanish and the other ones in English…
In Spain there are few bilingual schools and the teaching methods they use are quite old: they only transmit the content in English, because it's supposed that they learn Spanish in their daily lives outside the school. Until now, only the private schools offered this type of education, so, if you wanted your child to be fluent in two languages you hadn't had another option than pay for a good center, but nowadays it has changed: the government is promoting the bilingual education providing money to the public schools.
I firmly believe that if the content is taught in a good way (with innovative resources…) the bilingual education is a great practice because the students reach the same goals as the other students but also they acquire another language at the same time; so they have more knowledge and it leads them to have more changes to succeed in our globalized world.
As a future educator I'm aware that the language may become a real problem in the academic life of a child, so I'll try to put all my efforts to help the newcomer students and make sure the fact of not knowing the language wouldn't be an impediment to their future success.
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