The Hispanic culture and language was enthusiastically embraced Saturday morning inside Fairview Elementary School during the second meeting of “Club Sabatino.”
Inside the school’s cafeteria, Hispanic R-9 students — with ample help from their parents — built blocks, drew pictures, solved math problems, listened to popular fiction stories and even sampled delicious homemade tortillas — all without a single spoken word of English.
“We want to encourage our students to maintain their Hispanic culture, their language and their customs,” said Fairview English teacher Amanda Ryan. “We’re finding (Hispanic children) don’t have a perfect grasp of English and they’re losing their Spanish. So one goal is to bring that back, because we want them to be both — we want them to be bilingual.”
The Spanish speaking population in the U.S. comprises 14 percent, by far the largest American minority. The R-9 approach is a reversal of sorts from the past, when immigrants of all colors and creeds were expected to instantly shed their native culture and embrace everything English as an all-or-nothing proposition.
But it’s not that easy and it’s far more complicated than that, Ryan said.
“It’s important for them to learn English, but it’s equally important for them to keep their Spanish (language and culture), because No. 1, when they go and get a job, they’ll be able to read and write fluently in both languages — they’ll be much more desirable to their employers.”
Which is true. American employers are increasingly seeking out bilingual workers. In fact, a recent CareerBuilder.com keyword search turned up more than 6,000 job postings seeking bilingual applicants. Employees who are bilingual in English and Spanish are particularly in demand. On average, bilingual pay ranges between 5 and 20 percent per hour more than the position's base rate, according to Salary.com.
While it might seem impossible that a native culture could actually be lost, it’s not as rare as one might think.
“The (Hispanic) parents learn enough language just to get by in society,” Ryan said. “All of the students are learning English — the older they get and more variety of English-speaking friends they’ll make, and of course they’re encouraged to speak (English) in the classroom to learn,” so it’s easy for children to lose their Spanish tongue as words are replaced by their English equivalent.
Plus, Ryan continued, “When kids have a grasp of their first language, knowing the sounds and letters, it makes it so much easier to learn English. They have something to connect it with. They can say, ‘I know that word in Spanish.’ The connections are just more equally made if they have that solid base of their native language. So that’s kind of a side benefit to all this — if they can learn it in Spanish first, then they’ll more easily recognize it when it’s spoken in English.”
Thirty-two students, 20 parents and 10 R-9 teachers participated in Saturday’s two-hour event. Those numbers were nearly doubled from Club Sabatino’s first meeting back in December. District officials would be tickled if those numbers doubled again next month.
Ana Castaneda read stories to the children, Abigail Rodriguez taught the sounds and letters of the Spanish alphabet and Susana Gonzalez taught basic math while Maria Guerrero and Maria Reyes whipped up the fresh tortillas.
“We just want to reach out to these (Hispanic) families because it’s so important they feel comfortable in our schools, and they feel comfortable coming to us and talking to us and that they know how to help their children,” Ryan said.
