Dual Language Academy Empowers Multilingual Learning
North Plainfield School District (NPSD) has prioritized dual language education since 2017, when it launched its Dual Language Academy. Dual Language Academy is a dual language immersion educational model where children learn to think, read, write, and communicate naturally in two languages.
With the growing number of multilingual learners in the state of New Jersey, dual language programming supports students in maintaining their home language of Spanish/English as they acquire a second language. With very few New Jersey school districts offering dual language programs, NPSD has a unique opportunity to act as a role model in the area.
English and Spanish are taught in the district using a “50-50” program model. Students spend half of the academic year learning their core academic subjects in Spanish with a Spanish-speaking teacher, and the other half learning in English with an English-speaking teacher. Research has shown that this approach is highly successful at teaching grade-level content while developing impressive levels of language proficiency in students.
“Research over the past 30 years shows that students who participate in these programs have cognitive advantages over students in English-only, monolingual programs,” shares Regina Acevedo, District Supervisor, ESL & World Languages. “Long-term participation in dual language programs produces enhanced cognitive skills, including greater cognitive flexibility, increased attention control, better memory, and superior problem-solving skills. Dual-language education will help our students succeed both inside and outside the classroom and will make them marketable for today’s global economy.”
Data collected by the NPSD in 2023 shows multilingual learners enrolled in the NPSD Dual Language Academy program since K/1 are outperforming their monolingual enrolled peers on the ACCESS testing. Also, dual language students who completed the New Jersey Student Learning Assessment had higher scores in ELA and similar scores in Mathematics.
Patricia Ochoa-Werschulz, a parent in the North Plainfield School District, emphasized the significance of enrolling her children in the program:
“Enrolling my children in the dual language program has been my family’s way of ensuring linguistic legacy in our family. Often, after immigration, a family loses their native language over time. A lot of the time it’s because the conditions in schools and society at large do not favor support of a second language. You need a community to help ensure the vitality of a language’s relevance and permanence. This program has afforded my children another way, outside of my solo instruction at home, to connect with their roots, their family, and an entire other world. They are speaking to their peers and their teachers in another language. They are reading and writing in another language as well. Those are invaluable skills to have. I believe that their participation in the dual language program has helped my kids become better prepared to be a part of a global community.”
As a passionate advocate for the Dual Language Academy, Patricia Ochoa-Werschulz continues to express her hopes and aspirations for the program.
“My hope is that this program opens my kids, as well as their peers, to bilingual or multilingual lives. I believe access to a second language will help them make meaningful connections far and wide throughout their lives and may even open up career opportunities for them as my bilingualism has for me. Without being immersed in Spanish in my home and greater neighborhood growing up, I would not be well positioned to serve two communities in my profession. The need for services is great, and the world needs more people with these language skills. North Plainfield is pioneering a great program that will give us social change for the better.”
Most students enter the program in Kindergarten or Grade 1, but applications are also open to all district students from Pre-K to Grade 6 who demonstrate appropriate proficiency in Spanish. The district is currently in the planning stages of expanding the program into the middle school.
Families interested in learning more about Dual Language Academy are encouraged to visit tinyurl.com/NorthPlainfieldDLA
