April 11, 2000
Students and educators coast to coast
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Jeffry Scott/Staff
Daisy Chu
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Fluent in 3 languages
By Sarah Tully Tapia
Arizona Daily Star
Daisy Chu spoke only Cantonese when she started school, where she was expected to learn in both English and Spanish.
Now in fifth grade, she is fluent in all three languages.
Daisy isn’t sure what she wants to do when she grows up, but she knows that being multilingual will help her. She once watched her mother, who works in a sewing factory, help translate for a woman at the airport.
“We just keep on learning and learning and keep on learning, and we don’t forget,”said Daisy, a pupil at Coral Way Elementary School in Miami, which has the oldest bilingual program in the country.
She prefers immersion
When Suni Fernandez started teaching eight years ago, she thought bilingual education was “the greatest thing.”
But two years later, the Oceanside Unified School District teacher noticed that her second-graders weren’t learning English because they were spending most of their timel speaking Spanish.
Fernandez, whose parents are Spanish and Dominican, learned English in Catholic schools in California and Spanish in Spain. She became literate in both.
The certified bilingual education teacher understands children’s obstacles in mastering a new language. She thinks immersion is better but she would like her school to add Spanish reading lessons for older children so they can become biliterate.
Kenneth Noonan
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He’s switched sides
Kenneth Noonan spent his professional life pushing for bilingual education, but now finds himself in the uncomfortable position of backing English immersion.
A former bilingual education teacher, Noonan helped found the California Association for Bilingual Education in the early 1970s. Almost three decades later, Noonan was forced to throw out bilingual education when a proposition passed in 1998, shortly after he became superintendent of Oceanside Unified School District near San Diego.
Since starting the English immersion program, Noonan has watched many students blossom in English.
“Forget what the studies say. They need to look at the kids,”said Noonan, who is Hispanic.
Cristina Pastori
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Spanish needed for jobs
Cristina Pastori gleaned some Spanish from her baby sitter as a tot, but speaks English the rest of the time at home. Now, the 14-year-old is becoming fluent in Spanish at Carver Middle School- a nationally recognized school that specializes in teaching in Spanish, French and German. Through the international baccalaureate program, eighth-grader Cristina got the chance to travel to Spain.
She plans to continue studying the language.
"It will get me better prepared for high school, " said Cristina, who wants to become an interior designer or a lawyer. "Especially because in Miami you need Spanish for alot of jobs."
