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Parenting
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DS1 starts French Immersion in the fall, to prepare...
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in Parenting
...I am watching Raider of the Lost Ark in french.
I am also drinking wine. French wine.
I've got a valedictorian on my hands. 
promised myself I'd retire when I turned gold, and yet here I am
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Re: DS1 starts French Immersion in the fall, to prepare...
Mine does too!
Maybe I should look into this French wine as well.
Medical school here he comes!
You take my ovaries, I take your yarns.
Sorry if its an annoying question but what exactly is a french immersion program exactly? What do they do and how did you find it. Thanks
Not annoying.
French Immersion (locally) means that until grade 6, all academics (including phys ed) are conducted en francais. All classroom activity is conducted in french. Questions, conversation, history, math, everything.
After grade 6 (locally) math and science are conducted in english.
I live in a small town in Canada. It is a public school. French Immersion is offered in one local school only. If you want your child to go, you simply enroll. No fees. Bus service provided to the school (as it is not the school that he would normally go to).
Approximately 50% of all students at the school are in the French Immersion program (total school population of 600 or so JK-gr8) so 3 and 4 year olds to 14 year olds.
ETA: you must start by SK (the year the child turns 5); you cannot enroll in grad 1 or 2. You are of course free to leave any time you want and attend your local school or any other school of your choosing.
I have known about our school district's language immersion program since I was pregnant with W. I had to sign him up through the district at a certain time. They have about 40 spots per school. The school W will be attending does French (other schools do Spanish, Mandarin, and I know there are others I can't think of right now).
Half of their day will be in the immersion language, that means all classes will be taught in that language.
They will stay with this program through elementary school. (Same kids in the program as well.)
You take my ovaries, I take your yarns.
Logan (hopefully) will be in this program, too. She'll probably do the spanish program, though. Sooooo maybe I should start drinking margaritas and eating lots of queso dip!
bubs- why did you choose french? Just out of curiousity. I can't imagine that the Mandarin program is extremely popular....
My DS does to a french immersion school too. It is very similar to the one the OP mentioned. All subjects, except English language arts are taught in French. Where I live you have the option to continue it all the way through to the end of high school. It is part of our public school system, and any kid can go. If their local school does not provide it then they are bussed to a school that does. French is one of the official languages in Canada which is why the immersion program is so widely avaliable.
My DH did immersion until grade 9. I didn't do immersion, but took french until Grade 12, so I have a fairly good grasp of the language. We chose to do it b/c I wanted to give my kids a good grounding in french. In Canada that can open up a lot of doors professionally. It will also make any of the other romantic languages (Italian, Spanish) easier to learn should they choose to. Studies have shown that the earlier a child learns a language the more likely they are to keep it. I don't know how long I will keep my kids in immersion- it depends how they are doing. Right now I am thinking until grade 6, but we will see how it goes.
Oh, and it is cetainly not the perfect program for every kid, but DS is highly verbal, so we thought it would be good for him. I am not assuming it will be a fit for my other kids, we will wait and see.
My french is beyond dreadful, DH's is non-existant.
I have a personal belief than unilingualism is largely a North American arrogance. The opportunity to be exposed to another language as a very young person (when it is not available in the home) is an opportunity I am not willing to miss.
Also, french is around -even here- on the tv, on every label on every product, on the damn street signs. I've watched more hockey games on the french CBC than I can count. It just makes sense.
I plan on 'brushing up' on my french (took french from grade 7 to 2nd year university a hundred years ago) but my main worry is that when DS2 enrolls, the two of them will be able to plot right in front of DH and I en francais with us being none the wiser, lol.
If you can speak one language, you can speak two. If you can speak 2, you can speak 3.
These are my thoughts for my kids, I certainly do not judge those who go a different academic route. Hell, we might end up in regular public school in a few years if it looks like it is not a good fit. But we are going to give it a try.
I am not concerned about the language or academic factor. DH and I are involved and aware. Anybody can tutor their own child in math (for instance) up to grade 6.
ETA: rebs said it much better, thanks
Actually I would think it would be extremely popular. Mandarin is one of the top languages to learn if you are in international business, along with Spanish. Some of the private schools in Canada are now offering Mandarin classes.
The school we're zoned for offers French. We were almost rezoned to the new elementary school, that's the one that's doing Mandarin.
What I'm hearing is that people are very excited for the Mandarin, especially with the changing face of business in the world now and in the future.
You take my ovaries, I take your yarns.
(I'm speaking from the inside not as an outsider)
We have the Mandarin program at 2 of our 4 Elementary Schools, where I think it's nice I think the district is doing a slap job of it. they have for 1/2 a day in preschool and hour in Kindergarten and 20 minutes 1st through 12th, after 6th grade it becomes optional they can drop Mandarin, or take French or Spanish, as long as they take a language class.
The District calls it an immersion program but it's far from immersion if you ask me. My kids won't be going to either one of the schools offering Chinese but they will be going to the one that will teach Spanish (20 minutes a day K-5th, they they can choose to take it 6th-12th, or take Mandarin or French).
Since I can speak Spanish I rather them take Spanish.
Stanley Oct, 2006
McKenna Feb, 2008
Evelyn July, 2009
Baby Boy Oct, 2011
I'm jealous. Around here the only language immersion program is at a private school that is 1.5 hours away and to the tune of roughly $20k/year.
Our public schools have actually eliminated all foreign language at the elementary and middle school levels due to budget cuts. You have to wait until high school now to study any languages.
That being said, I'm in the process of finding someplace for ds to take language lessons. Ds wants to continue with Spanish from his preschool/kindergarten and I know that the YMCA offers Spanish classes. He's also very interested in learning Mandarin and I'm investigating options for Saturday Chinese schools!
I suppose you are right. However, I think spanish is a very valuable language to know as well.
^^^
Most of my contemporaries who are now bi or multi-lingual learned as teenagers or adults. Some did a year (or more) abroad in university, others travelled, one friend found a program (when he was in his 30s) to do an intense immersion program for Spanish to further his law career. He lived in South America for 3 or 4 months and learned Spanish. He is fluently bilingual (married to a girl from South America now).
Point is: yes, we have opportunity here, but the chance to learn never, ever ends. I still have hope that my 9 years of studying french will be reserected and perhaps even I will be able to properly converse in another language.
I have a personal belief than unilingualism is largely a North American arrogance. The opportunity to be exposed to another language as a very young person (when it is not available in the home) is an opportunity I am not willing to miss.
I agree with you 100% - I am jealous. Ooo La La! (sorry couldn't resist saying that
)
The International School? Not only is it $$$$$, it can be pretty hard to get into. IIRC (from when we looked into it), the waitlist was pretty long. The Dean of the law school's daughter went there and she suggested to me to get on the French waitlist, b/c Spanish was more popular (this was before they offered Chinese, which they do now).
I think the only option around here is one of the private schools, and I'm not even sure they offer immersion... I think it's a great opportunity for schools that have it though.
Yep. Tuition for elementary is $14k plus you have a ton of additional costs for uniforms, various fees (the activity fee for 4th grade is $2,200/year!), enrichment classes, after school care, etc. Maybe that doesn't seem to bad for a HCOL but for Indianapolis? Sky high.
Luckily though, living in a university town, even though there aren't foreign language options through the public schools there are other resources available. If there's one adjective I'd use to describe myself it's "resourceful" so have no doubt that I'll be tapping into those other options, lol.
Personally I think it is very high for Indianapolis, especially with some of the other options that are available in the Indy area. There are some really decent Catholic schools, Park Tudor, University, and then of course, some of the suburbs have really good schools. I do know that people who send their kids there LOVE it and can't say enough good about it. A lot of the law school professors/deans send their kids there, at least for k-8.
I guess the price is probably comparable to Park Tudor, but still... I think both are really high.
I was mostly interested in it for the language immersion aspect, but paying that much just seems insane, especially when there are other ways to get language education (which Indy had, too). Now we're in Knoxville, but since the university is here there are actually quite a few options outside of immersion. None of the schools offer it unfortunately. There's one that might, but it is similar to the International School in price.