Students in Raquel Solli's kindergarten class at Springdale Elementary School began fidgeting and struggling on the carpet.
“Clase, Clase,” Sulli called out in Spanish.
“Shhh, shh, shh,” echoed a chorus of 5- and 6-year-olds, which quickly fell silent.
Multilingual students currently make up 36% of Tulsa Public Schools' total student population, and the district is working to improve the academic performance of English learners while introducing new languages to English-speaking students. We are introducing more bilingual classrooms like schools.
The languages most frequently spoken among English learners in the area are Spanish, Chuukese, Hmong, Pashto, and Marshallese.
Springdale is one of seven neighborhood elementary schools in the Tulsa area, along with Celia Clinton, Cooper, Disney, Kendall Whittier, Sequoia and Skelly, to offer dual language instruction in English and Spanish.
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Dual language instruction is also offered at three magnet elementary schools and one magnet middle school: Ralph J. Bunsch's Therow, Eisenhower, and Felicitas Mendez schools.
Springdale originally started as a one-way program, but is currently in the process of transitioning to a two-way program for all grade levels.
Currently, all Springdale students are taught in English for math and Spanish for social studies and science. Children from preschool through second grade receive language arts instruction in their primary language (English or Spanish), and in third grade they receive instruction in both languages.
In Sulli's kindergarten classroom, almost all the posters and signs on the walls are written in Spanish. But on the other side of the building, in third-grade math teacher Justin Yozzo's room, posters and signs include a mix of numbers, English and math symbols.
Unlike Sulli, Yozzo doesn't speak Spanish fluently, but when working one-on-one with multilingual students, she picks up words and phrases from them and incorporates them as needed.
“When teachers model that they are students too, students feel more comfortable learning, making mistakes, and growing,” he said. “I always ask my students to teach me Spanish so they understand that I am a learner, so I am gradually able to use it in class.
“Of course, it's broken, but the children helped me, and little by little I started to understand it better.”
Multilingual students already make up more than one-third of TPS' enrollment, and that number continues to grow.
In a presentation the district gave to the Oklahoma State Board of Education in February, Sean Berkstresser, TPS executive director of information technology and analytics, said the district was adding an average of 78 new students per week. He said there was. In the fall semester, that number rose to more than 100 students per week.
At the district level, new students are defined as multilingual students who have attended a U.S. school for less than two years.
Springdale schools alone have added 50 new students since the start of the school year, Principal Rebecca Bacon said.
Most new students at Springdale speak Spanish as their first language, and the school's front office is fully bilingual in English and Spanish.
However, the school's English language development teachers had previously learned basic Pashto phrases to be able to communicate with the school's Afghan refugee students.
“We strongly believe in supporting the language and culture of all our students,” Bacon said. “We don't want any child to lose their mother tongue.”