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No sir/ma'am, The problem ISN'T bilingual teachers. The problem is a lack of commitment at the district for immersion learning and that two 3 or the 4 teachers we're burned out union hacks. Two of them had no interest is teaching gringo kids spanish but were solely interested in teaching illiterate latino kids their own language with a heavy dose of leftist dogma.

I lean WAY left; I just don't think that any public school teacher should be teaching policy or politics.

Kurt

About "bilingual teachers". As I wrote before, this is my training at the graduate and postgraduate level. I did not just receive teacher training. I also received second language teacher training in theory, practice, and internship. The first thing is the teacher who knows how to teach a second language. Immersion itself is a specialized branch of that. Secondly, if it's a multi-grade approach in an institution such as a school, there needs to be some kind of program that carries over from grade to grade, and yet allows the expert teacher the freedom to teach according to that teacher's knowledge, assessment of the class etc.

If you stick a bunch of kids in the classroom, and a teacher who fluently speaks the target language, that to me is not "immersion".

Btw, at the time that my children were to start school, I observed a core French teacher. The policy was to hire according to mother tongue rather than training. The kindergarten teacher did not apply any of the principles that I knew of. She simply jabbered at the kids in French. She introduced three different songs on the same day. She kept changing the structure of her vocabulary. She did not make the songs comprehensible in the ways that could have been done.

By contrast, I watched an excellent lesson by the immersion teacher during my internship. She was introducing the song "Sur le pont d'Avignon". The purpose was to introduce the nasal sound "on"for these gr. 1 students who were learning to read. She first established a scenario of taking a walk, suddenly there is rushing water that she can't cross. One of the kids came up with a solution by pushing two desks together, creating a bridge "le pont" - and from this key word, "pont" - the kids ended up singing the whole song and marched out to recess still singing it. The week's lesson built on the "on" sound. (The method is called Lesablier).

Great post!

I just wanted to add that, at the secondary level, you will not be able to find very many candidates who can teach a subject (math, science, history, etc.) using the foreign language. It's just impossible. I am fluent in three languages, but I cannot teach my subject matter in anything but English. The technical vocabulary alone would stop me from being a qualified candidate.

Then, aside from the language barrier, can the candidate even teach? I worked in a school district that had a rampant language problem, and the "solutions" imposed by the almighty District Office will make people cringe.

I'm glad you realize the political problems at union-driven schools. This is one of many reasons I got myself out of there.

AZN piano, In immersion learning the academic subjects would be taught by native speakers (of the target language). We're both in So Cal, where there is no problem finding native spanish speakers to teach ANY subject nor mandarin, french or japanese, the other popular immersion languages. Remember we're talking about middle and high school social studies or a math subject. You're citing a problem that doesn't exist. What you can or can't do isn't relevant.

Kurt

Are those native speakers also trained in second language teaching, and in immersion 2nd language teaching? (As well as being experts in the subject being taught). Is there a comprehensive program going over the grade levels so that the whole thing runs rather seamlessly, with such teachers trained in 2nd language teaching as well as experts in the subject areas being the ones teaching?

You fail to realize the difficulty of the certification program. Good luck getting certified to teach Chemistry in Korean.

As it stands right now, schools have difficulty recruiting math and science teachers IN ENGLISH.

I'm citing a problem that doesn't exist? Oh, please. Get your facts straight.

There is some published research indicating that children growing up in multilingual or immersion environments tend to lag behind their peers for a while but catch up with time. This is very difficult to measure especially over a long time horizon so take the research with a grain of salt.