Two X’s the First Grade

This Deja Tuesday post on dual immersion was originally written late last summer, before Mia entered first grade.

Speaking to my children in Spanish, like the morning cup of coffee or hot water beating on my back, is a small pleasure that polishes each of my days.

I exaggerate my accent and send my gestures sailing straight across the top of ridiculous.  My voice swells, especially when my tongue rolls along the outside of a double R, or when I’m delighting in the oral treasure of an Ñ.

Amid the million daddy do’s of any given day, it’s brilliant fun to steal a moment and step inside the skin of a character that isn’t quite me as though I’m dressing up for a kind of verbal Halloween.

I am not fluent in Spanish, in fact I struggle for every well constructed sentence.  This is part of the reason for my inflated accent.  I treat Spanish exactly like singing: since I cannot do it well, I make sure to do it loud.

I long for the authority of a second tongue.  Spanish is my first new language, but I plan to follow it with something more eclectic, I’m considering Klingon.  I never learned Spanish as a child, despite my Honey and Papí both being born in Mexico, and raising their daughter with fluency. As an adult, I struggle to absorb new vocabulary into a mind already littered with everything from next week’s list, to every thread from the last five seasons of Lost.

I want my children to have what I did not. As some Writer Dad readers already know, Mia attends a Dual Immersion program. 90% of her school day is in Spanish. Yes, I love my daughter, and no, this isn’t cruel.

“Why don’t you just drop her off in Tijuana?” That’s what one of my best friends said when I first told him (quite excitedly) that we wanted to place Mia in this particular program.  This beautiful philosophy, not everyone understands. Music and language are highly beneficial to the development of the mathematical mind.  The internet is an awfully big place, filled with towering terabytes of text, but you’d have to comb it all day to find a half pile of research that disagrees with this elemental truth.

But Writer Dad, how will I know when my child is ready for music, or a second language?

Because you will look down and see their ears. Children are sponges, and we should not ever underestimate them, because they will absorb all that we ask. Delivery is important, of course, which is why we would never throw her into a school in Tijuana. That would be immersion, not dual immersion.

What makes dual immersion successful is the consistent practice of full body response.  This means that the teacher employs language, in addition to gestures, when teaching their class. This was wonderfully illustrated one day at the dinner table, sometime toward the end of Mia’s first month of Kindergarten. “Is it hard sometimes,” I asked. “Not knowing what Sra. is saying,”

“Only if I’m not paying attention,” she said, barely lifting her head.

Exactly.

How is this different from life?  How much do we miss, simply because we’re not paying attention? Being in the Dual Immersion program has not only taught our daughter the basics of another language, it’s taught her some of the fundamentals of a fulfilling life. If you really want to learn, you have to pay attention.

Our last summer was wonderful.  I helped Mia with her Spanish and she helped me with mine. I had a bit more vocabulary than she, but Mia strings what she has together as beautifully as if she were born in Barcelona (Gracias Señora Mochila).

The two of us exchanged words all day long in a room full of toddlers without anyone wise to what we were saying. It was like we had our own secret code. Of course, we were also using our bodies as we spoke, so if the toddlers were paying attention, eventually they’ll get it too.

Writer Dad

Sean Platt is a ghostwriter, creative blogger, and occasional potty training expert.