Forget Spanglish — español, please

SAN JUAN — Most of the students in Luci Gandi’s Pre-K class moan their teary whimpers in Spanish.

And Gandi, who only speaks an inkling of the language, replies in her terse, clear Arkansas-accented English.

After some back and forth, the child gets the idea of what she’s trying to say and wanders off.

Later in the day, the situation will reverse — English-speaking students will stare dumbfounded at another teacher giving instructions in Spanish.

“I’m Anglo and don’t speak Spanish, ‘un poco,’” said Gandi, a 57-year-old teacher at Reed Mock Elementary School in San Juan.

“When they started this program, I said ‘do you want me to go to another school?’ They said, ‘No, you won’t flip-flop between Spanish and English like the (bilingual) teachers do.’”

Where English was once the language to learn and Spanish solely spoken at home in the Rio Grande Valley, a growing number of area schools are pushing their students toward being truly bilingual.

No more broken sentences or subbing an English word in when the Spanish word slips your mind, a practice often referred to as Tex-Mex. Parents and educators are demanding their children become fully fluent in both languages.

“When we started this I had about 70 percent of the parents against it. Their point was, ‘I came to the U.S. so they could learn English, why do they have to learn more Spanish?’” said Sylvia Cano, the principal at Reed Mock, which began using the program in 1999.

“There’s still some parents that feel that way, but there’s also a lot more educated parents saying, ‘Can we take this further, to middle school and high school?’”

A modern generation

National Hispanic Heritage Month is observed Sept. 15-Oct. 15.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Hispanics’ impact on our nation is growing every year.

In the Valley, where immigration and migration from other parts of the country has rapidly increased over the last decade, the impact is particularly dynamic. But Spanish has definitely become a larger force in local schools.

In Hidalgo County, the percentage of Spanish speakers also fluent in English rose from 38.2 percent in 2000 to 41.8 percent in 2006, according to U.S. Census data.

While too small of an increase to be considered statistically significant, especially considering the constant influx of new residents into the area, the bilingual education movement has taken on a greater following over the last decade, said Leo Gomez, a bilingual education professor at the University of Texas - Pan American.

There’s the fact the changing global economy, with its shrinking barriers to international trade, has placed a greater monetary value on those fluent in multiple languages. But also significant is the modest renaissance Mexican culture has lately experienced in the Valley and the rest of the country, especially among younger generations.

While their parents may have strived for full integration into U.S. culture, modern generations have embraced Mexican heritage and view it as a source of pride — whether it be by waving a Mexican flag, visiting a traditional folk healer or keeping Spanish alive in their homes.

“Over the last 30, 40 years people like myself, we have come to the realization that we’re losing a part of our heritage, as the school system assimilates folks into the English language,” Gomez said,

“My children’s children, unless things begin to change, they probably won’t even have conversational Spanish.”

Little sponges

In 1995, Gomez developed a two-way model of bilingual education. The premise was that Spanish language students would benefit from instruction in both languages, improving their English and learning basic skills like computation and reading comprehension that many missed out on in the early grades when they were too quickly forced into classes taught in English.

The additional benefit has been that Spanish-speaking students, as well as English speakers, grasp Spanish in its grammatical and written form, not just the basic conversational form that is of little use in the professional world.

At Reed Mock, where about two-thirds of the student body are native Spanish speakers, the morning announcements might be in Spanish, but math class will be in English, science class in Spanish and so on and so on.

Each day of the week is given a corresponding language for conversation. So, one day students ask for milk in the cafeteria, and the next they say “leche, por favor.”

If prior classes are any guide, by the time Gandi’s Pre-K class heads off to middle school 95 percent of the students will be fluent in both languages, Cano said.

For Laura Treviño, a first-grade teacher from Monterrey whose two children attended dual-language schools here, the only question is why every school doesn’t offer it.

“In Mexico, all schools teach two languages; in Europe, sometimes they learn three. Only the U.S. teaches one and it’s a disadvantage,” she said.

“It’s like being gifted being bilingual. And when they’re (young), they’re like little sponges. When they’re old, they’re embarrassed to speak because they have an accent.”

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James Osborne covers McAllen and general assignments for The Monitor. You can reach him at (956) 683-4428.