Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Pre-school Immersion schools

I am looking into the possibility of a charter language immersion school. Does anybody have:
A. Most important real experience with an immersion school.
B. Solid empirical evidence relating to benefits vs negative outcomes. Particularly in regards to gifted kids.
C. Lastly, but still okay, a good logical argument for or against this path for a probable gifted child.

Background: No, I have not had my 3 year old tested yet, but I would be surprised if her language subtests were not very high. Also there is a German immersion school locally, and I speak German at an okay level to hold a conversation. There are also many Spanish immersion schools locally, which would be kind of nice due to the high level of Spanish speaking individuals in the area, but then my Spanish is not all that good, but I could learn.

Also, prior to dd being born, I heard a group of kids all speaking very good German at a restaurant without a German accent, but an obviously American accent, I now am fairly sure that they were from that school, and it seemed so neat to me.

I do realize that more information is required in order to make a judgment for or against a school. I would, however, like to limit the focus of this tread to the language immersion aspect of the school, unless somebody has strong evidence or believes that as a rule those schools are inherently bad in some other way.

I am going to launch 2 topics my other topic is on micro schools that cater to gifted. I would put them together, but I do not want one to hijack the other, but if anyone has insight that is related to both topics that might be interesting.

My kids attended a French language immersion school from PreK through part of elementary. Eldest went through 4th grade, middle kid through 2nd and youngest through 3rd grade. They left for a mix of financial reasons (couldn't keep paying tuition, especially when eldest went off to college) and class size reasons.

I noticed on your other thread you mentioned very small schools. While their immersion school was not small, it wasn't big either. PreK through 4th probably had 30 kids per class (split into two sections). 5th through 8th grade had as few as six kids (school only goes through 8th). Because the middle school grades are so small, the school could not offer the range of ECs that my kids wanted. Of course, your child is only three, so I wouldn't concern myself with the small class size at this point.

The immersion school they attended was not specifically for gifted kids, but there are plenty of kids there who are very likely gifted. For example, my eldest kept in touch with her classmates, and at least 25% of the class now attends an Ivy. The other 75% are attending well regarded colleges, though not elite schools. My eldest is now on a study abroad semester in France, as a sophomore. Typically they make kids at her college wait until junior year, but she is fluent (and also has junior standing, but that is a different discussion).

My older two were not identified as gifted until 7th grade, so our decision to send them to the language immersion school had nothing to do with being gifted. My youngest is in 5th and we have not had her tested. The immersion school was good for them as they were surrounded by bright kids (you'll have to evaluate your immersion options to see if this is true there). More importantly, they learned another language when they were young. It is much easier to pick up a language as a little kid, and my older two report that taking another language later (German for eldest, Spanish for middle kid) was easy due to the immersion experience.

Didn't answer the A, B, C.

A. Learning another language at a young age.
B. Don't have any empirical evidence to back my claims of benefits.
C. The reason my eldest started in immersion was because the cost was the same as daycare, but she learned more than at daycare. If the alternative is babysitting or daycare, the immersion school has to be the better option. As I mentioned, we did not consider our kids gifted (not at that age), so gifted didn't figure into the decision.

A. My kids are both taking French (to be honest living where we are there isn't a 100% english option but there are variations on how much french they get in a day between the 4 public boards).

B. I don't have any empirical evidence.

C. Some of these points don't apply since you're talking about a combination gifted/immersion program but I'll include them anyway. This is often debated and discussed on Canadian forums and the basic summary is -
- in parts of the country where immersion is a choice (as in there are a small number of immersion schools in a large city and people choose to attend) immersion is used by many as a substitute for often non-existent gifted programs. People generally don't stick (or keep) struggling kids in immersion. It tends to attract involved and/or smart parents who often tend to have smart kids. This is generally seen as a good thing and while the classes aren't exactly gifted, generally there isn't the same degree of variance that you would see in a typical classroom. That said, a truly gifted program would be even better in this regard. Potential downside to this can be decreased diversity.
- in cities like ours where immersion isn't really a choice then the above doesn't apply. It is often just something else that accentuates the differences in learning speed between a gifted kid and average.
- the one possible downside that I've heard is that some gifted kids get frustrated when they don't have the vocabulary to discuss a topic at the depth that their gifted brain wants to. Personally we haven't run into this yet but I can see this potentially happening next year when science switches to french for DS. However, to be totally honest he hasn't been able to discuss science at school to the depth that he would like for the last 3 years either because a) teachers don't have time and b) he knows more science than the teachers do anyways (ok I'm being a bit of a smart a** but this is a kid that eats and breaths science. He watches science shows whenever possible, he has been known to try to read university text books and he has two engineer parents that have answered his never ending questions since he started talking so the elementary science curriculum is not exactly cutting edge for him). The way we look at it, at least he will be increasing his french vocabulary next year while reviewing basic science....
- positive - they get another language. Depending on where you live, travel plans or future career choices it might come in handy.
- positive - this is the one area where teachers are the undisputed experts over my kids (and us for that matter) and my kids do LEARN something at school. DS is very math/science focused and we're happy to have something that he actually has to work at a bit to learn (he isn't really seem to be gifted at picking up languages).
- potential negative - I have a few friends that went all of the way through in French but then struggled a bit in first year university because they had done technical things like chemistry, physics, calculus in french but were taking them in english in university. They all did well in the end but it took a bit of extra work at first to map what they were learning to what they already knew.

I want to thank both of you for your helpful insights. Much of it is similar to my own thoughts, but it is good to hear different persons viewpoint. Particularly, from a parent whose child has gone down the road that particular road.