Bilingual Education

Enough talk of bilingual education. I have been listening to all these people who are not teachers pontificate about bilingual education. Sorry to burst your bubble, but it works. I’ve been teaching for 13 years. I have been teaching for the past two years in Santa Ana. From my experience bilingual education works.

In a class of 30 students (third grade), the majority are “immersion” students. These children are having a lot of difficulty reading and writing in English. My “transitional bilingual” students who are literate in their primary language of Spanish are reading and writing beautifully in English.

There is something to be said for those children who have learned the skills of reading in Spanish first, and transferring those skills to English.

CATHY L. SPIER

Irvine

* As an Anglo American educator who has taught immigrant students ESL for over 20 years, I would like to state my support for bilingual education at the secondary level.

We routinely receive recent immigrants who are barely literate in Spanish and are capable of picking up social English, but suffer greatly when not provided the academic base in their native language. By providing ESL and native language support in the content area, the staff at Sierra Vista High School in L.A. County has graduated an overwhelming number of students in the program every year.

It is indeed unfortunate that a math expert like Jaime Escalante should lend his support to this initiative, just because Garfield High may have had a bilingual program that was not properly staffed or administered (letter, Dec. 22). Throughout the state there are countless Hispanic students who will not graduate because they were transitioned too early or not given the proper instruction.

MURRAY GILKESON

Language Dept. Chair

Sierra Vista High School