How a bilingual preschool in Memphis hopes to spice up literacy

One late September morning at Su Casa Preschool, seven 4-year-olds sat cross-legged on their classroom’s studying rug, anxiously awaiting their flip to share what they’d completed that morning.

When tossed a tennis ball signaling her flip throughout recall time, or “tiempo de recordar,” Citlali declared in English that she’d performed with blocks. She handed the ball to Alli, who recounted in Spanish making lemonade of their classroom’s play kitchen.

As the opposite 5 college students continued to replicate on their morning work time actions and labored on their English- and Spanish- talking expertise, their co-teachers, Amalia Perez and Priscilla Victor, took turns asking questions like “¿Qué más cocinaste?” (“What else did you cook dinner?”) and “¿Qué construiste con bloques?” (“What did you construct with the blocks?”)

It was a typical Monday morning at Su Casa Preschool, in Memphis’ Berclair-Highland Heights neighborhood. Right here, lecturers and leaders of the nonprofit goal to offer a top quality early childhood schooling to predominantly Spanish-speaking immigrant kids in northeast Memphis who’re much less prone to have entry to such a program and usually tend to battle academically.

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“We’ve received to start out right here, in early childhood, to construct that basis,” stated Cherise Clark, the director of Su Casa Preschool. “We need to get to a spot the place we’re delivery off a terrific batch of youngsters to Kingsbury Elementary or to Treadwell Elementary … We simply need to see our neighborhood blossom.”

Since launching with one class in 2016, the Christian bilingual preschool has expanded to 4 school rooms serving kids ages 1-5, who attend two days per week. However as Memphis’ Hispanic neighborhood continues to develop, the group has needed to flip extra households away.

Memphis’ Hispanic inhabitants has grown by 25,000 over the past decade, in keeping with the newest U.S. Census information. In complete, Hispanics now make up simply over 7% of town’s inhabitants, and about 16% of Memphis-Shelby County Faculties college students. And the variety of MSCS college students whose first language is just not English has elevated to about 8,800, or 12% of all MSCS college students. Statewide, Hispanics are the quickest rising demographic group in colleges.

As Memphis and Tennessee as an entire battle to enhance dismal literacy charges, Su Casa’s bilingual early childhood programming is one instance of the seek for options — particularly for Hispanic or Latino immigrants, who face higher obstacles to tutorial success than their white, native English-speaking friends.

Whereas Tennessee college students general improved throughout all topics and grades within the newest standardized checks below the Tennessee Complete Evaluation Program, English language learners made the slimmest positive aspects of any scholar demographic group. Simply 15% of ELL college students have been thought-about on grade stage in each math and English language arts final faculty yr. 

Regardless of these challenges, bilingual preschools like Su Casa and twin language programming are uncommon in Memphis. Su Casa is believed to be the primary bilingual preschool to open in northeast Memphis, and stays considered one of only a few inside metropolis limits. 

Whereas MSCS leaders have promised to proceed efforts to enhance early childhood programming and develop world language programming, Tennessee’s largest faculty district doesn’t presently supply any bilingual pre-Ok lessons, and just one faculty has a twin language program. The program, housed at Treadwell Elementary, serves 200 college students.

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Assembly a essential want

Su Casa began with volunteer work in a Memphis faculty, however the group was by no means meant to deal with a preschool program.

It began in 2005, when a gaggle of volunteers from Second Presbyterian Church volunteered at Berclair Elementary as a part of the Memphis “Undertake A Faculty” program. As they constructed relationships with Berclair households — lots of whom have been current immigrants to Memphis and spoke solely Spanish — the volunteers seen an unfilled want for grownup English applications. 

In order that they started working.

After rising its grownup programming for a number of years, Su Casa Household Ministries formally turned a nonprofit in 2008 with the overarching purpose of being a spot of security and connection for Memphis’ Latino immigrant neighborhood.

However one piece was lacking: What about their kids? 

Earlier than becoming a member of Su Casa, Clark noticed the necessity for extra accessible, high-quality early childhood schooling all through her 15-year profession as a Spanish and English as a second language trainer in Memphis colleges.

Recalling her work with kindergartners as an ESL trainer at a Memphis constitution faculty, Clark stated she was shocked by how far behind many college students have been — even from the very begin of their time at school.

When she first joined Su Casa’s grownup English class programming, Clark remembers many mother and father struggling to navigate Memphis’ complicated schooling system and the U.S. schooling system as an entire. 

A few of them got here from nations the place preschool is common the way in which Ok-12 faculty is right here. Some have been daunted by the considered calling round to completely different applications and colleges to search out an open spot for his or her baby. Others merely couldn’t afford any of the applications they did discover.

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A lot of these mother and father had enrolled within the lessons to determine how one can assist their kids at school. But regardless of their efforts to study English, Clark stated, many nonetheless struggled to enroll their kids in preschool — not to mention discover a bilingual program the place their kids may enhance each their English and Spanish talking expertise.

Even Clark, a former MSCS trainer who speaks English, struggled with questions when it got here time to enroll her personal kids in preschool.

“How do I interact extra with my kids? How do I make it possible for I’m being one of the best father or mother I might be? These are common questions that come again to a really common need — mother and father simply need to assist their children do nicely,” Clark stated. 

“However for them, it was like ‘I don’t know how one can navigate the system. I don’t know the language to do it. I can’t advocate for myself, not to mention my baby, so what do I do?’” 

A bilingual program means mother and father can higher talk with their kids’s preschool lecturers. However past that, analysis over the past 20 years has discovered many potential advantages to kids studying a second language early, when their brains are extra versatile. 

A College of South Carolina research earlier this yr discovered that Hispanic college students who attended a bilingual preschool in Charlotte have been higher ready for kindergarten, and went on to attain larger in each studying and arithmetic via second grade, as in comparison with their friends who didn’t take part in such a program.

Research over the past 20 years have discovered the benefits to early bilingualism in kids stretches past teachers. A 2003 research discovered that, by the age of three, bilingual kids present indicators of heightened empathy and longer consideration spans. 

These advantages are partly why it was essential to Florinda Salcedo for her son, Angel, to attend a bilingual preschool. However greater than that, she stated, it was about preserving the heritage of her fiance, who emigrated from Mexico practically a decade in the past.

Although Salcedo speaks each English and Spanish, she struggled like Clark to discover a bilingual early childhood program for Angel. She lastly landed on Su Casa after a neighborhood buddy really useful it. 

A yr after enrolling Angel, Salcedo says her 2-year-old son is participating in additional conversations and is studying extra Spanish. She’s assured he might be higher ready for kindergarten than she was when she began at Kingsbury Elementary, with no preschool expertise in any respect.

“That is the place for him,” Salcedo stated.

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Perez, considered one of Su Casa’s pre-Ok lecturers, stated she will be able to’t assist however suppose again to what may’ve been if she and her siblings had entry to a preschool program like Su Casa’s.

When she began kindergarten at Raleigh-Egypt Elementary Faculty, she knew solely a handful of phrases in English. Her siblings, who had immigrated to the U.S., began faculty with even much less expertise talking English.

“If I got here contemporary (from one other nation) and I solely spoke Spanish, I’d think about it could be laborious for me. It’s a unique setting, completely different language, the youngsters are completely different,” Perez stated, as she watched considered one of her college students, who lately emigrated from Colombia, draw. “I’m the youngest, so by the point I went to highschool, I already knew a number of phrases from my siblings, however somebody like him? And that is his first faculty setting?”

“We’re serving to them get assimilated into this neighborhood, into this nation,” she stated.

Variety helps kids admire different cultures

Su Casa presently serves about 50 kids who attend faculty two days per week — both Mondays and Wednesdays or Tuesdays and Thursdays. It goals to offer a Christian-centered, hands-on studying setting with small lessons of about seven kids.

The group additionally retains its tuition as little as doable at $2,300 a yr — with scholarships accessible — in order to not add one other barrier to low-income immigrant households. Whereas tuition doesn’t cowl this system’s bills by any stretch, Clark stated Su Casa is ready to fund this system with donations and grants.

Su Casa’s Highscope curriculum focuses on what kids ought to have the ability to do at their age stage in eight key areas: approaches to studying; social and emotional improvement; bodily improvement and well being; language, literacy, and communication; arithmetic; inventive arts; science and know-how; and social research. 

However Su Casa additionally provides a ninth focus space: second language improvement. For the overwhelming majority of Su Casa college students, that second language is English. A minimum of 75% of slots are reserved for households with one or each mother and father who emigrated from a Spanish-speaking nation. However the nonprofit additionally serves some households within the neighborhood who merely wished their kids uncovered to the Spanish language early.

That range is considered one of Su Casa Preschool’s best strengths, Clark stated.

“We hope it makes some progress within the area of serving to kids on each ends study to work together with different cultures, study to see them as lovely, and to see different people who find themselves completely different and to work together with them and suppose that’s regular and good,” she stated.

Over the past two years, Rachel Rodriguez has despatched her two kids — 4-year-old Luca and 2-year-old Lorenzo — to Su Casa. She, too, has appreciated the preschool’s dedication to range.

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Earlier than having kids, Rodriguez and her husband, who emigrated from Peru for medical faculty, agreed they’d communicate primarily Spanish at dwelling to encourage bilingualism. She stands by the choice, however admits it put loads of stress on her as a mother to talk Spanish, her second language, at dwelling.

Not solely has Luca’s and Lorenzo’s Spanish improved since beginning at Su Casa, however each of them are capable of join with each their mother and father’ heritages. Once they go to Rodriguez’s household, they embrace their Japanese heritage, and at college, they’re taught by a gaggle of largely Latina girls.

“It makes them really feel like our household is regular; there are different households that talk two languages, they usually can actually really feel comfy being themselves on this bilingual setting,” Rodriguez stated. 

This story is the primary installment of a Chalkbeat Tennessee deep dive into the function early childhood can play in enhancing literacy in Memphis and throughout the Volunteer State. This effort is supported by the Training Writers Affiliation Reporting Fellowship program.

Samantha West is a reporter for Chalkbeat Tennessee, the place she covers Ok-12 schooling in Memphis. Join with Samantha at swest@chalkbeat.org.