COMMUNITY
WEDNESDAY, MAY 22, 2019
HERMISTONHERALD.COM • A7
Umatilla’s new bilingual program aims to elevate both language and lengua
sion classes, which will be
under a different format
than native language liter-
acy courses.
Next
year,
Garcia
Quezeda will share her class
with a co-teacher. She will
lead a Spanish-only sec-
tion of the class during
one-half of the day while
her co-teacher will handle
English for the other half.
She said the dual lan-
guage courses won’t just
be benefi cial for students
like her who came to school
knowing little English, but
also native English speak-
ers with little exposure to
Spanish.
By ANTONIO SIERRA
STAFF WRITER
At least three languages
were being spoken at
McNary Heights Elemen-
tary School on Thursday,
and Umatilla School Dis-
trict offi cials were encour-
aging it.
A Japanese language pro-
gram was visiting the school
and the children seemed
to be picking it up quickly.
McNary Heights Principal
Rick Cotterell said he had
just greeted a student who
proceeded to spout off sev-
eral words in Japanese.
“I think it’s legit,” he
said, laughing.
But school offi cials are
more interested in better
integrating a language far
more prevalent in Umatilla:
Spanish.
With the exception of a
charter school in Ontario,
Umatilla will become the
fi rst district in Eastern
Oregon to offer dual lan-
guage immersion courses in
English and Spanish when
it starts the program at the
beginning of the next school
year, according to Superin-
tendent Heidi Sipe.
Sipe, who’s worked for
the district since 2000 and
been its superintendent since
2007, said such a program
has been a longtime goal for
her and her staff, but the dis-
trict has only recently been
able to gather the resources
and staffi ng capacity to get
it started.
David Lougee, the bilin-
gual program director for
the district, said staff was
inspired to pursue it further
when they attended a 2015
conference that showed the
benefi ts of a dual language
program.
Sipe, Cotterell, and the
Umatilla School Board all
became ardent support-
ers, and with nine bilingual
teachers on staff this year,
the district felt ready to take
the plunge.
“It takes a long time to
build capacity,” she said.
Teaching in two tongues
Teaching is the act of
juggling a rotating assort-
ment of competing inter-
ests, but McNary Heights
kindergarten teacher Jessica
Garcia Quezada throws in a
few more balls by toggling
between languages.
“On your bottom,” she
says to her students as she
tries to settle them on a car-
District presses ahead
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
Kindergarten teacher Jessica Garcia Quezada works with student Yadiel Coria on his spelling in Spanish on Thursday in a native
language literacy class at McNary Heights Elementary School in Umatilla.
Staf photo by E.J. Harris
Kindergarten teacher Jessica Garcia Quezada goes over vowel
sounds with her native language literacy class on Thursday at
McNary Heights Elementary School in Umatilla.
pet. “Abajo.”
She leads them through
a song where they chant
all the months in English
before asking them if they
were ready for “Español.”
“Enero, Febrero, Marzo,
Abril, Mayo, Junio y Julio
tambien,” a cluster of 11
voices chime together.
“Agosto, Septembre, Octo-
bre, Novembre, y Diciem-
bre tambien.”
This is one of the dis-
trict’s native language liter-
acy classes, a class specifi -
cally designed for 48% of
the school that’s classifi ed
as an “ever English learner,”
a stat that includes English
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learners and those that will
be reclassifi ed as fl uent.
While most school dis-
tricts in the area use an
English language learner
model where students learn
in an English-only class-
room while being pulled
from the class throughout
the day to work on literacy
with a bilingual teacher or
assistant, Umatilla’s native
language literacy program
begins the year mostly
focused on Spanish literacy
while introducing more and
more English as the year
goes along.
Sipe said it often brings
tears to her eyes whenever
she sees Garcia Quezada
teaching.
Garcia Quezada is a
homegrown teacher, hav-
ing returned as a teacher
four years ago after going
through the Umatilla school
system as a student.
She was a native lan-
guage literacy student her-
self, and Lougee taught her
as a student when he still
worked in the classroom.
Although she had gone
through the program her-
self, Garcia Quezada said
she was initially worried
in her fi rst year of teach-
ing that she would set her
kids behind by focusing on
Spanish.
But Garcia Quezada said
she was assuaged when she
saw her students’ growth,
and Sipe and Lougee said
the district’s data backs it up:
fi rst-graders who were in the
native language literacy pro-
gram generally performed
better in English literacy
than their peers who were in
English-only classes.
Garcia Quezada cred-
ited the program for sharp-
ening her literacy in both
languages enough that she
could eventually use those
skills as a teacher in her
home community.
“I see these kids and I see
myself,” she said.
Garcia Quezada said
she’s excited to start teach-
ing dual language immer-
There’s no shortage of
bilingual education critics.
Some feel like such a pro-
gram forces a foreign lan-
guage on a family with no
interest in learning it, while
others think incorporating
Spanish in English lessons
inhibits students from learn-
ing the country’s predomi-
nant language faster.
But Sipe said Umatilla’s
dual language program is an
opt-in program and students
will still have the option
of attending an English
only-class.
And
Cotterell,
the
McNary Heights princi-
pal, said people only have
to look at the data if they’re
worried that a dual language
course is an impediment to
English profi ciency.
The district plans to
restrict dual language classes
to kindergarten in 2019-20
with plans to expand it to
K-5 in the years to come.
Eventually, Sipe said, staff
would like to offer dual lan-
guage courses to middle and
high school students as an
elective course.
Any early concerns about
the program hasn’t damp-
ened early enthusiasm: Of
the students that have reg-
istered for kindergarten so
far, 40 have opted in, eight
have opted out, and another
10 are undecided.
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