Sheboygan
Sheboygan Area School District, an hour north of Milwaukee, is known for its Hmong population, making up 40% of the English Learner population.
Dual Language Immersion
“The Sheboygan Area School District offers a Dual Language program for students starting in 4-year-old kindergarten or 5-year-old kindergarten. The Dual Language classes include native-Spanish speakers and native-English speakers, who receive content-based instruction in both Spanish and English. The program is offered at the Early Learning Center (4K), Sheridan Elementary School (K - 5) and Horace Mann Middle School.”
HS Course Offerings
Hmong Learning Lab: “This class teaches Hmong literacy to Hmong speakers.”
Introduction to Education — A great way for students to explore the teaching profession while still in high school!
Spanish for Spanish Speakers — Designed for Heritage Language Learners
Less-Commonly-Taught Languages
Chinese I-IV is offered at the high schools, as well as an independent study option for students that have exhausted the standard language sequence courses.
English Learners
“The EL/Bilingual programs in the Sheboygan Area School District started in the late 1970's with the arrival of the Hmong refugees from the Vietnam War. By 1980 there were 80 students K-10. Today there are about 1,900 EL/Bilingual students who participate in the programs, and roughly 36 different languages are represented among these students. The main languages are Hmong and Spanish.”
Listen to my interview with Kaitlin Leppert to learn more!
Lake Country Academy is a K-8 charter school that offers Spanish instruction in every grade. “After decades of research in second language acquisition, researchers have found that language is not built up from practice but from consistent and constant exposure to comprehensible input of the language being acquired. The Spanish language program at Lake Country Academy is proficiency-based and focused on providing opportunities for students to interact with the Spanish language in class. The Spanish curriculum at LCA equips students from day one with high frequency vocabulary that allows students to be able to communicate on a broad range of subjects.”
Image Credits: