“¡Buenos dias!” Izamar Ortiz-Gonzalez announces cheerfully and her class of kindergarteners responds in kind, “¡Buenos Dias!”
“Amigos, show me your manos,” the teacher asks the 5-year-olds, mixing English with Spanish to simplify the question for them.
The kids wave their hands.
At H. Allen Hight Elementary, students are learning Spanish at every grade level, year after year, beginning in kindergarten when they’re still perfecting their ABCs and learning to read basic sentences in English.
Ortiz-Gonzalez meets for about 35 minutes per week with kindergarten through 2nd grade classes, and for about 40 minutes weekly with 3rd-5th grades. By the time they leave Hight, students are expected to write simple sentences and answer simple questions in Spanish, she said.
Giving all kids at Hight an early taste of a world language can spark them to learn more. If they opt to take Spanish every year in middle and high school, they will have been exposed to 13 years of instruction before graduation.
Hight’s Spanish program is consistent with preparing kids for college and career in an increasingly global economy. Hight is a candidate school for International Baccalaureate’s Primary Years Programme, which requires affiliates to offer a world language.
On this day, the kindergarteners discuss the days of the week: “Do we have escuela on Sabado or Domingo?” They also practice pronouncing the names of farm animals, identifying them on a chart, and making sounds associated with them — gato, gallo, pato, caballo, pollito.
“¡Me Gusto!” the teacher tells Matthew. “I like it.”
Interviewed after the kindergarten class, Ortiz-Gonzalez said that she tells Hight’s students that whatever career they choose as adults, learning Spanish is likely to help them.
“Whether it be a doctor, whether it be a lawyer, more likely than not, especially in California, you will have a lot of clients who speak Spanish, so it’s going to benefit you to be able to understand them so you can communicate with them,” she tells students.
“And in the (job market), where employers are looking for bilingual employees, picking up another language is essential.”
Hight’s elementary school Spanish program also is consistent with Natomas Unified’s Board-approved Vision that, “All NUSD students graduate as college and career ready, productive, responsible, and engaged global citizens.”
