ESL Schools in Indianapolis

On Wednesday we all went by bus to Indianapolis. It was cold for some, but not for Kiwis from the south. We visited two schools that focussed on integrating immigrant students into the US school system. One school was a K to 6 grade school and had an immersion model. Approximately, 75% of all students in the school of c. 380 had a first language other than English - and most of those were Latino. One of the features of the classroom was flexible seating: beanbags, different shapes and sizes of chairs, bouncy balls. The active seating idea allows for those active students to keep active while they learn. Also, it is found that having these options mean students try to get to class to get the seat they want. If they are not there, someone else gets the seat! The model of immersion was seen as best for learning English at this younger age.

An alternative type of school (A 'Newcomer School') was next door. Only established in the last 4 months, this school had about 150 students (grades 7 to about 10), was a public school and received its funding from the local county as all other public schools do in this area. The school is rapidly growing and pools from across the city. The staff work closely with parents and the community. Unfortunately, quite a few of the students have had harrowing backgrounds on their journey to the US and I won't go into those.

So the school represents a laudable commitment by the state to improving outcomes for these students. Here, immigrant students learn together in different grade levels and are not in the usual public school immersion. The idea is that as the language of specific subjects get more complicated, students coming into English language learning will be best served when language learning is the whole focus in their different subjects. The results speak for themselves. Students show rapid development in language ability and we saw many confident young speakers. The staff were fully committed to improving the outcomes for their students. The director has worked out that with this system they get double the amount of explicit English language practise per week than they would in an immersion type system: In the latter they may sit in classes that are unproductive for them, because they simply can't communicate well enough..

The two different models have lead to quite a discussion amongst the Fulbright DAT's with respect to best approaches.