When Laura Benito walked into a Lake County grocery store, all she wanted was a bag of rice.
Instead, Benito, who came from Spain to teach in the dual-language program at Woodland School District 50 in Gurnee, was overwhelmed by a shelf full of all kinds of rice.
“I almost burst into tears,” Benito said. “There are so many options here.”
In America, “everything is giant,” said Javier Robles who came from Spain this year to teach in the same program.
Robles and Benito, who both live in Gurnee, said they miss inexpensive organic grocery items and the ability to walk to wherever they need to go.
But, with help from the Woodland School staff, they said they are learning how to navigate American life, as well as new teaching skills — and they appreciate the good behavior of their students.
Meanwhile, Kara Peterson and Natalie Gutierrez, who also teach in the dual-language program but grew up in Lake County, said they in turn are learning new teaching techniques from Benito and Robles, including a program called dictado.
Most importantly, their students are learning to speak fluently in both Spanish and English, and will be more successful because of it, the four teachers agreed.
As one of their third-grade students, Fabian Morales, said, “If I got a job and I did not know English, I would not understand what they were saying or know what I was supposed to do.”
The dual-language program is in its fifth year at Woodland. Several other elementary school districts in Lake County have similar programs, including Diamond Lake School District 76 in Mundelein, North Shore School District 112 in Highland Park and Waukegan Community Unit School District 60, among others.
The Waukegan school district, as well as others in Illinois, have hired teachers from Spain to work in their dual-language programs, according to Elizabeth Szepesi, bilingual and dual-language education coordinator for the Woodland district.
At Woodland, parents sign their kindergartners up and a lottery is used to determine which will participate in the program through the fourth grade. About 1,000 of the roughly 6,700 children in the district, which includes kindergarten through eighth grade, participate.
The students spend a half-day studying math and other subjects all in English, and a half-day studying language arts and other subjects all in Spanish. Peterson, Gutierrez, Robles and Benito teach in Spanish all day long. Other instructors in the program teach in English all day.
When students come to their classes, they can only speak in the language in which it is taught. The dual-language classroom has native English- and non-Spanish-speaking students, combined with native Spanish-speaking students.
“This is not like a foreign-language class. It’s a dual-language immersion program,” Szepesi said. “It’s amazing to see children learning in both languages; how proficient they are. Parents will say, ‘My child was able to have a conversation with a Spanish-speaking person the other day,’ for example.”
Finding teachers
Finding enough Spanish-speaking teachers in the area for the program can be a challenge, she said.
To recruit highly qualified native Spanish-speaking staff who are bilingual and have teaching experience, Woodland partnered with the Illinois State Board of Education to obtain a federal grant to bring teachers from Spain to teach at Woodland.
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“We knew they could offer us additional ideas on Spanish instruction, and that we could learn about their culture,” Szepesi said.
“In 2015, I hired six teachers from Spain, and this year, there are eight,” she said.
Next year, there will likely be more as the school expands the program to fifth grade, with hopes of introducing it in sixth-through-eighth grade in the future.
“I’ve lived in another country,” she said, referring to Mexico. “I know what it’s like to be in a new place that has a new way of doing things. The feeling is very overwhelming.”
That’s why she made sure to help them every step of the way.
“Elizabeth helped us with every single thing, even how to buy a mattress,” Benito said. “Everybody was willing to help us.”
Benito and her husband, Daniel, came to Gurnee from Spain with their 1-year-old daughter in 2015.
“We wanted to teach abroad,” she said. “We wanted to learn how to teach a second language for real.”
They also wanted their daughter to be bilingual.
“It’s difficult to raise kids bilingual in Spain,” despite the fact that some English is taught in school, she said.
Cultural differences
Learning to navigate the American culture was challenging at times, Laura Benito said.
“Here in the states, I was expecting to walk a little bit more,” she said. “We need the car for everything here.”
Robles agreed.
“In Spain, I don’t have to take a car,” he said. “For everything, I walk. It took me a lot of time to get used to that.”
Enrolling in an American healthcare program through the school was also difficult.
Szepesi helped Robles understand terms such as co-pay and deductible, and choose an insurance plan that worked within his budget, he said.
“In Spain, you go to the doctor and that’s it. Everything’s covered,” Robles said.
Another difference is that in Spain, “almost everything is organic and we don’t use growth hormones, and it’s cheap. Here, it’s expensive. It’s crazy,” he said.
Before deciding to participate in the program and teach at Woodland, he said he discussed it with his family, colleagues and girlfriend. “And myself,” he added.
“But it was easy, because you never know if you’ll have an opportunity like this again,” he said. “You have to make a new life.”
He talks to family and friends on Skype, and his girlfriend has come to visit him, he said.
Discipline
Benito said she learns something new every day at Woodland.
“What I love is the positive behavior,” she said, referring to a school program called ROAR, which stands for “Be Respectful, Take Ownership, Be Accepting, Be Ready.”
“It works,” she said. “The kids aren’t angry or mad. Back in Spain, the discipline is way worse. Here, you just need to say, ‘high 5,’ and the kids raise their hands,” and get quiet.
But she said she misses the face-to-face time she had with students’ parents in Spain. Except for parent-teacher conferences, she often only communicates by email, and her inbox is filled with lots of new messages every day, she said.
Benito said she’s learning ways to improve her teaching skills.
“When I came here I was so surprised at how some of the English native speakers could keep a good conversation with me in Spanish,” she said. “They were only 8 years old.”
But she discovered not every student can learn that quickly, and Gutierrez helped her slow the pace and take lessons in stages to address various students’ needs, she said.
Benito, in turn, taught Gutierrez and Peterson a technique she used when she taught in Spain called dictado, which has been added to the Woodland curriculum.
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“We dictate sentences in a paragraph,” she said. “They repeat and write it down, and go over the spelling and grammar.”
Benito also introduced Spanish literature to the students. Some of her advanced English-speaking third-grade students can read 400-page books written in Spanish, she said.
Gutierrez of Round Lake said her parents immigrated from Guatemala and Mexico and she learned to speak Spanish at home, but only spoke English at school.
By teaching in the dual-language program and working with Benito and Robles, she said her Spanish-speaking skills have greatly improved. She also works at the Round Lake library, where she said helps non-English speaking patrons.
“I have a student who is very resistant to Spanish,” even though his family is Hispanic, Gutierrez said. “I’m teaching him, and now he is able to communicate with his grandparents, and the family has grown closer.”
Sheryl DeVore is a freelance reporter for the News-Sun.