And although schools like this are the norm in many parts of the country—the Massachusetts Association for Bilingual Education lists 53 immersion programs in that state alone—the South has been slower to adopt the immersion method.
“When we look at our school as administrators and board members, we constantly ask, ‘Is this decision good for kids?’ ” Ruffner says. In assessing whether to institute a language immersion program at St. Peter’s, a pre-K to grade-5 school, “It was so clear to me that the answer to this was ‘yes.’ ”
Laying the Foundation
After the retirement of a longtime head and an 18-month search process, Ruffner took the helm at St. Peter’s in the spring of 2013. With 15 years of teaching experience and a master’s degree in education, she had the knowledge, but she had never been a head of school. The good thing? Ten of her teaching years had been spent at St. Peter’s. The bad thing? Ten of her teaching years had been spent at St. Peter’s.“If you are going to be a good head, you have to be willing to be lonely,” says Herb Barks, former head of The Baylor School (TN) and a frequent consultant for St. Peter’s. “You’re now the one who signs the checks for the faculty, so you’re not going to have the same collegial relationships.” Barks knew from experience that starting a bold new program as a new head was going to be challenging. “I know I’ve tried things that didn’t work,” he says. “Taking those risks is all about jumping off the cliff. And most educators are not risk-takers.”
But when Ruffner became head, she believed it was time to take some risks. As she reviewed the state of the school, she was realistic about what she saw. St. Peter’s had a great curriculum, a warm and nurturing atmosphere, and dedicated families. But from a business perspective, St. Peter’s was stagnant in both admission and fundraising. It was time for a bold move to differentiate St. Peter’s from the other independent schools in the area and position St. Peter’s as an educational leader. “I had read a lot about language immersion in other parts of the country while I was getting my master’s. I thought it would certainly come to Chattanooga at some point, so why not now? Why not us?” says Ruffner.
Kirk Walker, president of the Southern Association of Independent Schools (SAIS), once told Ruffner that staying true to the school’s mission should be the guideline for all our decisions. “As an Episcopal school that encourages a global perspective of acceptance, language immersion was a perfect fit for our mission,” Ruffner says. “If we want St. Peter’s to prepare children for a fulfilling future, what better way to do that than to open up the world through language?”
In the summer of 2014, a beloved preschool teacher decided to retire, and Ruffner seized the opportunity to pilot a preschool class with just an hour of language instruction a day. She hired Monica Griffin, a teacher who is a native Spanish speaker and raising her own family to be bilingual. “Living in different countries and having always studied in bilingual schools helped me understand the value of learning another language,” Griffin says. It was Ruffner’s job to make sure parents were educated about the benefits of language exposure as well. The first class, in 2014-2015, responded so well, Ruffner knew it was time to take the next step.
Some parents were skeptical at first. “When we decided to implement full immersion for a class in 2015-2016, people in the community made comments like, ‘Why do we need to teach our kids another language?’ ” Ruffner recalls, citing the idea that a few hours of high school Spanish was what þ most people expected. One board
member reported fielding questions about whether the students enrolled were from families who “just didn’t want to have to teach their kids English.” But when Ruffner and Griffin spoke to parents about research on immersion and how the students responded to Spanish instruction, the parents were willing to follow Ruffner down the path to full immersion. In the spring of 2015, Ruffner took her plan to the board
of trustees.
Some trustees instantly saw the great potential and benefits. “With anything that is not considered ‘the norm,’ there’s an uncertainty,” says Kymberly Restelli, board secretary. But “the immense benefits that occur when a young mind is introduced to and immersed in language are immeasurable not only in the short term, but for the rest of their lives. I only wish this had been available when my children were that young.”
Creating a clear action plan helped Ruffner show the St. Peter’s board of trustees how immersion would benefit students and the school as a whole. She had researched immersion schools across the country and found a language immersion partner called add.a.lingua. “When you begin an immersion program, you can’t just hand your curriculum to a bilingual teacher and say, ‘Teach this in Spanish,’ ” Ruffner says. “You have to have a plan to introduce language concepts in both languages at appropriate times.”
Add.a.lingua has experience in immersion programs and offers teaching guidelines for every period of every year, from kindergarten through 12th grade, plus teacher training, support, and classroom resources. “After visiting add.a.lingua partner schools and observing the children,” Griffin says, “I was convinced that we could successfully achieve similar results at St. Peter’s.”
Ruffner and Griffin started telling parents about the exciting news, asking who wanted in and who wasn’t ready for full-on immersion. Activities like Parent University, an ongoing informational series that covers a variety of topics, helped Ruffner explain the details of how the program would work. “The plan was always to offer two parallel tracks. Parents could choose the classic curriculum or the Spanish immersion program. After talking with the add.a.lingua experts, and seeing how their kids were thriving, every parent in that original class chose to jump in on immersion.”
“Launching and growing a dual-language immersion program is no small undertaking,” says add.a.lingua co-founder Lilah Ambrosi. “We often tell school leaders that launching a school within a school—which is what an immersion program will feel like at first—is akin to a moon shot. To be successful, you need mission control. That’s where we come in. We support our partners with expertise, resources, and ongoing support and immersion-specific training to help keep them on track and reaching their goals.”
Ruffner’s “countless hours of research and meetings with add.a.lingua, coupled with touring schools [that] have implemented this program, gave her the foundation and understanding she needed to bring immersion to St. Peter’s,” Restelli says. “Her ability to see it live, in person, convinced her that this was an amazing and unique opportunity that we could give our students. Her passion then drove the initiative to the board and beyond.”
Building the Program
Claudia Pickett was one of the first preschool teachers hired for the full immersion program. “My biggest fear was trying to figure out how to make parents and other educators have faith in a program with a language that they don’t even speak or understand,” Pickett says. But it quickly became clear that preschool parents have changed. “This newer generation of parents is more tuned in to why language is important and what it will mean for their child’s future,” Ruffner says.The full immersion program was designed to add a class every year, as the original preschool class moves up. “We have had some staff turnover along the way,” Ruffner says. “But the vast majority of our teachers stay. Some will just have new roles as the immersion program ages. Talking with the faculty about the staffing plan for the next several years is so important. If our current teachers are comfortable, that makes bringing in a new program so much easier.”
Ruffner’s academic plan for third through fifth grade follows the add.a.lingua pattern of combining immersion classes with English classes. Traditional immersion programs in the model St. Peter’s chose have preschool through second grade at almost 100 percent immersion, and at least 50 percent immersion for third through fifth grade. This allows some classes to explore English constructs that don’t have Spanish counterparts, like the “-igh” sound.
Barks sees how that third-grade shift is going to be a crucial period for the program. “The biggest hurdle to get over will be when these kids reach third grade,” he observes. “It is such a pivotal year in comprehension. But if they can surpass that and keep the parent satisfaction, I think it will be amazing.”
Add.a.lingua shows that standardized tests scores of third-graders in immersion classes are just below their English-speaking peers. But in fourth grade, the immersion students begin to pull ahead, with enhanced analytical skills in both the native language and the immersion language. Ruffner plans on Parent University classes and visits from add.a.lingua staff to help explain that to parents who might be concerned about the shift.
Reassuring parents about achievement and scores is especially important given that most of St. Peter’s graduates apply to three area prep schools with rigorous admission standards. “We had the research to show parents that by fifth grade bilingual children were performing at or above their peers,” Ruffner says. “But we also knew that we had to educate the middle and high schools about the kind of students they would be seeing from St. Peter’s in the future.”
Thus began an awareness campaign for area educators on what true immersion is and how students are taught. Ruffner invited middle and high school language teachers, admission professionals, and other school staff to come to St. Peter’s and see the program in action. At an informal coffee meeting after one visit, it was clear that the guests were impressed. “Those conversations not only covered questions about curriculum and academic progress but also how those schools could attract our biliterate graduates,” Ruffner says. She continued the awareness campaign at conferences, business lunches, and other interactions around Chattanooga. Ruffner and her team also recently hosted leaders from a Tennessee public school district considering immersion.
The Road Ahead
After four years, the original preschool class is now in first grade, with all instruction in Spanish except for art, music, and physical education. The students speak, read, and write in Spanish. But it’s not just the academic skills that are impressing the teachers. “My biggest joy is seeing the students speaking and having conversations with each other in Spanish—and in seeing how they can learn and see the world from two different perspectives and two different ways,” Pickett says.With preschool, kindergarten, and first-grade classrooms at capacity, Ruffner and Griffin, now immersion program coordinator, are looking forward to the next few years. “Our greatest challenge is to build a strong team of bilingual teachers to fulfill the growing demand of the program,” Griffin says. Ruffner knows that this is a tall order, which is why networking is so important. “We need bilingual teachers with experience in kindergarten through fifth grade who are a good fit in our school culture,” she says. “We have to work harder to find those people, so we use contacts at add.a.lingua, teacher recruiting conferences, and the NAIS recruiting tools.”
St. Peter’s is also watching the immersion program’s greater impact unfold. “Having immersion students and teachers who are a part of our school family means that the students who are not in the immersion program have an exposure to language and cultural diversity,” Ruffner says. “We have attracted families that didn’t choose the immersion program, but were impressed with us as a school that practices a global perspective.”
So it turns out, Ruffner isn’t crazy. Her idea is working. “We knew it was a risk. Those first parents knew it was a risk. But when you see how empowered these children are with this skill, you see how it is such a gift,” she says.