A group of 24 kindergarten students — 12 from homes where English is the spoken language and another dozen where Spanish is primarily used — at Glenwood Elementary School in Waukegan began a journey designed to take them through the next six years together.
One of three Waukegan elementary schools with the two-way dual program, Glenwood Principal Cabrina Williams-Leneau said this is the first time it is offered at her school. The school’s students come from different parts of the city.
Williams-Leneau said the traditional kindergarten curriculum of reading, writing, math, science and social studies is taught in both languages, with the goal of putting students on a path to becoming multilingual by the time they reach middle school.
“I’m very excited about this program and I think eventually all students will be in it,” she said. “It will help them understand each other’s culture and in some ways have an impact on the community.”
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Glenwood’s inaugural dual language classroom was one part of the first day of class for approximately 14,000 Waukegan Community Unit School District 60 students on Monday at its 15 elementary and five middle schools, as well as three high school campuses.
As the Glenwood dual language students were adjusting to the first day of kindergarten, students at Miguel Juarez Middle School were all receiving T-shirts to designate their team for the year and teens at Waukegan High School were adjusting to new rules governing their cell phones.
Starting her 10th year leading District 60, Superintendent Theresa Plascencia said she hopes eventually the dual language program will be a districtwide effort. She was pleased with the first day of school.
“It went very smoothly with a tenured staff overseeing the process to ensure a strong learning experience and a seamless process to start the new school year,” Plascencia said. “The students will understand each other’s language,” she added, referring to the dual language program.
Along with the initial two-way dual language class, Williams-Leneau said there are monolingual classes taught in English only and one-way dual language courses taught in Spanish for English learners not ready for a monolingual classroom.
While teacher Sara Sanchez assigned Glenwood students their place on the classroom’s carpet, she used hand motions as she gave directions first in one language and then the other. She had students use hand motions to show they understood her requests.
Growing up in a home where Spanish was the spoken language, Sanchez said she has firsthand knowledge of the challenges of learning a new language, even as young as age 5. When a student is challenged in understanding a lesson and is working on an assignment, she knows what to do.
“I explain it in their primary language, so they understand,” she said.
Approximately half the high school students are in a new building, with freshmen experiencing an introduction to secondary learning at the Brookside campus, and juniors adjusting to the more-than-century-old Washington campus.
Senior Jaziel Palomo said he is looking forward to graduating in May and working toward a career in nutrition as someone who “is into fitness and nutrition.” Brijet Yoggerst, another senior, said she will be adjusting to the new cell phone policy, where they must be placed in a locker in each classroom.
Though the use of cell phones while in class has been against school policy for a while, this year students must place them in a locker in each classroom when they enter and can remove them when they leave.
“I think it’s a little too much,” Yoggerst said.
Yoggerst said she is already looking forward to a day in May when she will graduate and head to a four-year university in Illinois, where she plans to study political science.
“I had an internship with Clean Power Lake County,” she said. “There are so many environmental issues right around us. It’s important to use our voice and say something about it.”
Dan Hill, the Waukegan High School principal who oversees the Washington campus, said the school is entering the fourth year of its five-year transformation plan. There will be two semesters of gathering a lot of data.
“We’ll be assessing our teachers daily,” Hill said. “We’ll know if what we’re doing is working. We won’t have to wait for the school report card to come out.”
At Miguel Juarez Middle School, Principal Nelson Campos told an assembly of sixth and seventh graders that each would get a T-shirt in one of five colors designating their team for a variety of competitions throughout the school year. It is part of their advisory program which meets for 25 minutes daily.
“It’s part of social emotional learning,” he said. “It’s also academic. We want eighth graders to mentor sixth and seventh graders. We want everyone to take some sort of ownership. We may see which team has the highest grade point average or meets other standards.”