In the lunch room at Academy of World Languages, a PreK–8 CPS multilanguage school, a cluster of fourth grade girls sit around a table. One speaks English and Arabic, one speaks Spanish, and one speaks an African language, but the conversation is in Spanish. Principal Jackie Rowedder observes the interaction with wonder, noticing the English and Arabic speaker is parsing together bits of Spanish in order to participate in the conversation. When asked why she was attempting Spanish, a language that wasn’t in her curriculum, she answers, “That’s my friend, so I’m learning Spanish.”
Multicultural moments like these happen daily throughout CPS’s three multilingual schools, which include Academy of Multilingual Immersion Studies and Fairview-Clifton German School, in addition to Academy of World Languages. And while there are similarities between these three schools—they all offer preschool, they all offer a more extensive language experience than a traditional public school curriculum, and they all deliver the benefits of a bilingual foundation—they are also distinctly different in their approaches and offerings.
Academy of Multilingual Immersion Studies
Academy of Multilingual Immersion Studies (AMIS) is CPS’s only true immersion program. Starting in kindergarten, students receive half their instruction in Spanish—including science, social studies, and some mathematics. “Our goal is for our students to graduate being bilingual and biliterate. They’re not learning Spanish as a world language; they’re learning Spanish as a language art,” says Kelley Bagayoko, principal. Students become so proficient in Spanish, in fact, that they’re able to take the Spanish Advanced Placement (AP) exam for a chance to earn college credit—as middle schoolers. Approximately 60 AMIS students are current enrolled in AP courses. AMIS is the only school in Cincinnati to offer AP Spanish Literature and Culture.
When AMIS was founded, students were initially offered immersion into either Spanish or French. The demand for Spanish grew, and the French program was relocated to another school. Today, AMIS offers Spanish immersion as well as English as a Second Language (ESL) for native Spanish speakers, which accounts for about 60 percent of the student population. The English language isn’t the only thing these students are learning. They’re also schooled in American cultural comprehension—such as utilizing the bus system (and the vocabulary that comes along with it) and understanding the school’s uniform policy.
As a Kagan Cooperative Learning School, AMIS encourages students to engage with other students whose heritage language is different than their own. Using “bilingual pairing,” teachers intentionally pair students together for collaborative work in such a way that one has a higher proficiency in a language than the other, which creates a sense of cooperation and sparks goodwill that results in students helping each other advance. “In every classroom, someone is learning outside of their home language,” Bagayoko says. “Everyone in our building is learning a new language.”
Academy of World Languages
Offering Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, and ESL, Academy of World Languages (AWL) boasts the district’s widest array of intensive early educational language instruction. It aims for functional proficiency, which means students receive 150 minutes per week in language instruction. As a PreK–8 school, families can select which of the four foreign languages their child will study for the duration of their education at AWL. These four languages are classified by the U.S. Department of Defense as “critical languages,” which are those identified as most important for national security, international cooperation, and economic strength. Prior to this specialization, AWL also taught Latin, Italian, Spanish, and French in its history.
The ESL program, also called a Multilingual Learners program (ML), _is an immersion program and typically accounts for about 50–65 percent of the total student population, depending on the year. A total of 35 languages are spoken at AWL, including heritage languages in Swahili, Nepali, and Arabic. “We’re like the United Nations,” says Rowedder, who has served as principal for 22 years.
With such a high percentage of multilingual learners, AWL takes pride in the fact that all staff are trained in Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP), a step-by-step model that helps make classroom content more understandable for ESL students who are learning subject material in a non-heritage language
Photograph courtesy CPS
Fairview-Clifton German Language School
With roots dating back to 1888, Fairview-Clifton German Language School (FCGLS) is Cincinnati’s second-oldest magnet school and was initially founded to support Cincinnati’s massive German immigrant population in the 1800s. However, enthusiasm for the German language hit a sharp decline during WWI, and instruction ceased. In 1974, University of Cincinnati German professors Margith Stern and Larry Stevenson petitioned the Board of Education to launch a fresh German-English school, which was accepted.
Native and near-native German instructors were recruited from around the country, including Frederick Veidt, who served as curriculum coordinator and principal for the school’s first two decades—foundational years that paved the way for FCGLS to become the world-class bilingual program it is today. Like AWL, FCGLS uses the FLES model (Foreign Language in Elementary Schools) in its “whole language” approach. Starting in kindergarten, students receive 35–45 minutes of German instruction per day in groups of about 12 kids. All kindergarten and first-grade teachers are native Germans, enriching the authenticity of the students’ first introduction to the German language. Because students become proficient in German so quickly, and because students learn “content enrichment” in German (that is, other subjects are sprinkled with German language), the school typically does not accept new students after first grade.
The Case for Early Language Acquisition
Scott Rooksberry, German team leader at FCGLS, was pursuing a career as a high school German teacher when he took a long-term substitute position at FCGLS. There, his career path took a turn. “I walked in there and was watching a first-grade German classroom, and these 5- and 6-year-olds were just mesmerized by this teacher,” Rooksberry recalls. “It was like watching Mr. Rogers deliver language instruction to these young children.” Rooksberry decided to enter elementary education full time and never looked back.
Science tells us that children absorb new languages at astonishingly fast rates—much faster than adults—which makes it both fun and rewarding to teach them. According to research cited by the United Nations Regional Information Centre for Western Europe, children learn language through an implicit (or subconscious) system, rather than the explicit (or conscious) system that is more common in adulthood. This transition from subconscious to conscious language acquisition is believed to happen around the age of 12, which makes early exposure all the more essential. And, it sets students up to most quickly acquire additional languages.
“Kids are amazing,” says Rowedder. “The kids who come in and are literate in their native language adapt very quickly to learning second, third, and even fourth languages.” This is especially true for languages that share common roots, such as German and English (which are Germanic languages) or French, Spanish, and Italian (which are romance languages).
This is one plug for native English speakers to learn German as children, says Rooksberry. The similarities in vocabulary—such as the words _bär for _bear and _fisch for _fish—are called cognates and serve as “scaffolding” to support a student’s learning journey in both languages.
Another benefit of early language acquisition is that it strengthens specific utilities of the brain, requiring both sides of the brain to collaborate. One study conducted at the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York revealed that children who learn a second language early in their development will store it in the same “compartment” as their native, or heritage, language, which makes it more natural to retain the second language over time. Another study led by Agnes Kovacs of the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste, Italy, studied infants that were exposed to two languages from birth versus one, showing that those with a bilingual heritage had better executive functioning and higher abilities to focus.
FCGLS parent Abria Drummonds, who has two children currently enrolled and a third who already completed K–6 at the school, says the benefits of seeing young children absorb a second language can even empower a parent’s approach at home. “You feel proud, and you really get to conceptualize how amazing the brain is in these children,” Drummonds says. “I find myself trying not to put my own limitations on them, because I can see they can pretty much do whatever they put their mind to.” Drummonds also finds it endearing that her three children have their “own little bond” around speaking German together, especially since it’s a language Drummonds herself is not proficient in. She encourages all parents to consider enrolling their children in a multilingual education for the myriad benefits it can bring. “You can’t put a price on it,” she says. “If you can speak another language, you can relate to another person who’s not like you and vice versa. And the more opportunities you can get, I really feel like it opens your horizon and your perspective.”
Principal Bagayoko also notes that early language exposure can develop into a “life-long love.” Just as kids develop natural inclinations towards sports or theater or music, some may also gravitate toward foreign languages if given the chance. This passion pathway is extraordinarily accessible, Bagayoko notes, as it can be nurtured through free library and internet resources. “One of the really important things about learning another language is it just helps kids to stay curious,” says Bagayoko, who has a 4-year-old daughter she plans to enroll in the school.
Rooksberry says language can also be an alternate avenue for a child to find academic success. For instance, kids who are “talkers” may struggle with subjects that require long periods of stillness and quiet (such as reading). However, it’s sometimes the more verbose kids who thrive in a language instruction atmosphere, where more chatter is better—at the appropriate times, of course. “Their proficiency comes with the minutes they spend in the language. The goal is to get as many minutes in that target language as possible,” says Rooksberry. For this reason, Rooksberry speaks almost exclusively in German to his students, with the exception of when behavioral issues need English explanations. Even then, students know it’s not ideal when he has to “put the flag down,” because “that’s not what our goal is,” he says.
Loquacious or not, all students can benefit from confidence boost that comes with being proficient in a foreign language. The majority of children in a multilingual program will know at least one language at a higher proficiency than their parents, which gives them a unique sense of empowerment that FCGLS principal Savannah Rabal calls the “valorization of the adolescent.” In fact, in some cases, parents are actually discouraged from trying to help their children learn the new language at home, as they may do more harm than good with mispronunciations, unless the parent is already proficient in that language.
“I do believe you’re a different part of their story when you’re a part of this early education where they’re really learning this language and keeping it forever,” says Rabal. “That’s the power of being a part of it in the beginning.”
Real-World Readiness
In addition to the benefits of language acquisition at a multilingual school, students also receive exposure to diverse populations and cultures—and can proudly share the uniqueness of their own cultures with others who are curious and empathic. With so much diversity represented, children are less likely to feel like outsiders. At AMIS, nearly 97 percent of the student body is non-white. At AWL, it’s 95 percent. At FCGLS, Rooksberry says his classrooms are “as diverse as you can get”—from race and gender to socioeconomic and neighborhood representation. Parents who elect enrollment in the school embrace this diversity, because they “want their kids to be in a classroom that looks like the world,” he says.
“When you say all are welcome, all are welcome,” says Rowedder of AWL. “A lot of our kids and families…enjoy it here because they’re not made fun of because they look different, dress different, talk different. Everybody here does. That’s what makes it fun.”
Exchange programs, such as the one offered at FCGLS, offer former students opportunities to experience real-life cultural immersion and also host international students in their own homes. In operation since 1980, FCGLS’s is the longest continually running exchange program in Ohio and is operated through the German American Partnership Program (GAPP). First, in the spring, the American students host German students from their partner school in Donaueschingen, Germany, in their homes for two weeks. They take them to quintessential Cincinnati experiences, such as Cincinnati Reds games or the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, before the German students fly out to New York City for a couple of days.
Then, the former FCGLS students, now rising ninth- or tenth-grade students, travel to Donaueschingen and often stay with the family of the German student they hosted here. They spend time eating and living with the student’s family, then travel to Berlin for a couple of days. This year, 24 former FCGLS students are participating in the program. “It’s the capstone experience. All those language skills they’ve developed here, they get to go over to Germany and sit around the table with a German family and get the real, authentic experience. It doesn’t get any better than that,” says Rooksberry. “My mission in the exchange program is empathy. I want students to see that our family here and the other families over there, we find that we’re not that different.”
No surprise, these skills in empathy and cultural awareness are highly useful and marketable in today’s global economy—and not just for students’ future careers, but even for first jobs in high school. Bagayoko relays stories of her former students who work summer jobs at Kings Island and receive desirable promotions—often out of the blazing sun—when supervisors realize they speak fluent Spanish. “Having those Spanish skills, it doesn’t take long for it to start to bear fruit,” she says.
Speaking German, Rabal says, “sets you apart,” noting that while plenty of people speak some level of Spanish, German is unique. “It’s something that is not unique enough that it’s not helpful, but it’s unique enough that it’s desirable.” Indeed, there are many Germany-based employers with offices around Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky, including Festo, DHL Express, Ditsch USA, and Balluff. The school makes it a priority to stay connected to the German-American Citizens League of Cincinnati and hosts an annual Fasching (Carnival) to engage with the community through German festivities. “We’re a community-based school and all that that means,” says Rooksberry. “I want parents to feel that this is just as much their home as it is for their child.”
AWL also typically hosts a public annual International Festival that features multicultural food and student performances. Students at AWL have been able to form quick connections with visiting players from FC Cincinnati, the Reds, and Bengals who might hail from other countries. Rowedder notes that some of her former students have chosen careers as interpreters at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital and the CVG Airport. She’s proud that about 30 of her current students are the “kids of kids” she had from her early years.
For all three CPS multilingual schools, there’s a legacy component that keeps families coming back—one where families want to uphold the multilingual and multicultural values that were instilled in them as children. Luckily, Cincinnati’s language schools only continue to improve, fostering the next generation of empathetic, world-ready language learners.
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