Our school is considering a Spanish Immersion class beginning for DS5 in 1st grade next year. Teacher indicated DS is the only K kiddo at the school that she believes would be successful in a full immersion classroom. We are willing to consider this as it would add a learning dimension that would help DS not be so bored, but looking for feedback from anyone with experience or knowledge about how these work and the success rate for gifted kiddos.

I think that this could work very well for an HG+ student of this age.

We have friends whose solidly MG DD (of an age with my DD) came up through an immersion program like this-- starting in K, and the program fed into the local junior high and naturally ended at the conclusion of elementary. She is now a HS freshman and is doing well, though there were some delays in literacy when she was K-3. On the one hand, that might be bad news for non-GT students, but in terms of HG+ ones, I can only see how that would be awesome. Really ideal in terms of going "sideways" rather than accelerating, if you see what I mean.

Oh, and after five years in the immersion environment, she is pretty much fluent in the other language, too. WAY cool.

As with most things school related - it really depends.

I'm in Canada so French immersion (FI) is big up here (although the popularity varies from region to region).

I grew up out west in a city where French isn't very common. The people I grew up with that did FI there loved it. In general families with struggling students either pull their kids from FI or don't sign up in the first place so the classes tend to have a higher concentration of smart, studious kids. I don't know if the people I know would be considered gifted but I'd guess at least MG. I do know a couple of them had a bit of a challenge in first year Engineering since all of the physics/chem/math terms they knew were in French but many schools now keep the maths and sciences in English to avoid that. Overall the FI schools acted sort of like bright/gifted magnet schools in a city that didn't have any gifted programming at the time.

I now live in Ottawa where French is a bigger deal (higher up Government jobs require French and it is an asset for many other jobs). All of the public schools are FI at least for the first couple years and then eventually you can opt out (down to 25% French I believe). Once the kids are old enough to choose then you get the effect that the weaker students opt out but there are a lot more kids here that stick with it so it isn't the same as out west. One potential downside to FI is that for gifted kids that are the type that want to dive deep into topics the language limitations can be frustrating (or at least that is often mentioned on gifted boards up here). In our case my kids are both obsessed with math/science which are in English so I can't say if they would be less boring than if they were in French where at least the language would add a bit of challenge. My DS7 isn't a fan of French (he has a LD in processing speed so maybe that makes it harder for him to pick it up???). He is definitely the type to drill deep on subjects and I suspect having science in French would make him more frustrated but it is hard to say. My DD5 LOVES it. She is constantly singing in French and will pretend to speak it all of the time. Last night we played a whole game of Battleship in French just because she wanted to. It is really quite funny because she just makes up French sounding words to fill in whatever she doesn't know (she has a great accent so it sounds almost convincing). Another consideration is that it can be challenging to help with homework as they get older (assuming you don't speak Spanish). My kids are young but I have friends with older kids who have often called upon our Francophone friends for help. On the plus side, it makes it more likely that the kids are doing the work rather than over-involved parents

All three of mine attended a French immersion school starting in Pre-K. Eldest went through 4th grade, middle through 2nd and youngest through 3rd. I think it was a good experience for all of them. Older two have been IDed as gifted, but not the youngest (haven't looked into that yet - she is only in 4th).

For kids that might be bored by the regular classroom, I think language immersion helps. I think it also makes learning another language easier later on (eldest took German, middle takes Spanish), and it helps with English vocab too (for SATs). Eldest is taking a junior level French course at college now (she is a freshman) and finds it easy - immersion certainly helped.

They had French immersion at a private school. I'm not sure how well the area public immersion programs worked (and I say that in the past tense because I don't think there are any around here anymore). Our district did not have one.

I am curious about your program. If your DS is the only K kid going into the program, how does that work?

I am curious about what your school is actually proposing - I'm not sure if what your school is suggesting is what many of us here think of as an immersion program (half-day/half-subjects taught in one language, half-day/other-half-subjects taught in second language), or if they are suggesting is something like an hour-long class that is taught via immersion?

I also am not really sure why the school thinks only an exceptionally gifted child would be able to "handle" an immersion class? I've known kids all over the IQ spectrum who've been instructed in foreign languages (typically an immersive-type approach) starting at very young ages, some as early as toddlers, and young children often do really well with immersive instruction. FWIW our school district offers immersion programs which require children start in the program in kindergarten, and there is no IQ/ability requirement for admission.

My gut feeling is to take the offer, but I would really like to understand a little bit more about what they are actually offering.

polarbear

The school is looking for 24 kids for the SI program...his teacher wasn't supportive for kids other than our son...she's been close minded about other things so I'm researching to develop my own opinion.

The school is suggesting full day immersion for 1st and 2nd and then half day immersion half day english for 3rd, 4th and 5th. The idea is completely new to me, but I'm beginning to see it as a possible solution to our schooling concerns.

One thing with immersion programs is that they generally don't have many entrance points. I'm guessing in your case you'll have to decide in grade one and likely wouldn't be able to opt in at any other point. With that in mind I'd be more likely to at least start it and see. You can always go back to English at any point if it isn't working out. He might be a bit behind after a couple years of full immersion but for most gifted kids that can quickly be caught up if needed.

I was also thinking about it a bit more and even if we had had a
choice we likely would have started in immersion. I grew up in a neighborhood where many kids spoke at least 2 languages and I now work in a very multicultural environment. I never really thought anything of it until I was backpacking around Europe with a bunch of people from various countries, many of whom were having a hard time adjusting to being surrounded by foreign languages. For me it wasn't a big shock, it was just like any day growing up (although I admit I find it more challenging being in countries that are based on different alphabets so I can definitely empathize).

How much of a solution it will ultimately be will depend on the teacher and the make up of the other 24 kids as well as your child's excitement about learning the language. I know for my daughter it is working really well. Learning French is something that we can't do as well at home as they can do at school and it is giving her something special to learn at school.

English is the quasi-official language of the U.S. and has effectively become the international language of educated people, so I don't see the point of immersion in a language other than English. English language immersion could make sense for children in non-English-speaking countries.

Academically, immersion in a foreign language is not a free lunch. Quoting Steve Sailer quoting the NYT:

http://isteve.blogspot.com/2010/08/upscale-bilingual-education.html
Upscale bilingual education
by Steve Sailer
August 18, 2010

'Ms. Bialystok’s research shows that bilingual children tend to have smaller vocabularies in English than their monolingual counterparts, and that the limited vocabulary tends to be words used at home (spatula and squash) rather than words used at school (astronaut, rectangle). The measurement of vocabulary is always in one language: a bilingual child’s collective vocabulary from both languages will probably be larger.

“Bilingualism carries a cost, and the cost is rapid access to words,” Ms. Bialystok said. In other words, children have to work harder to access the right word in the right language, which can slow them down — by milliseconds, but slower nonetheless.

At the same time, bilingual children do better at complex tasks like isolating information presented in confusing ways. In one test researchers frequently use, words like “red” and “green” flash across a screen, but the words actually appear in purple and yellow.

Bilingual children are faster at identifying what color the word is written in, a fact researchers attribute to a more developed prefrontal cortex (the part of the brain responsible for executive decision-making, like which language to use with certain people)....

One arena in which being bilingual does not seem to help is the highly competitive kindergarten admission process.

“It doesn’t give you a leg up on the admissions process,” said Victoria Goldman, author of the sixth edition of “The Manhattan Family Guide to Private Schools.” It is one piece of the bigger puzzle, which includes tests scores, interviews and the ability of a child to follow directions. “Speaking another language is indicative that you are verbal, but you have to be behaved.”

George P. Davison, head of school at Grace Church School, a competitive downtown school, said that bilingualism tended to suppress verbal and reading comprehension test scores by 20 to 30 percent for children younger than 12. “If anything, it can have a negative effect on admissions,” he said.'

I am kind of amused that people would consider an immersion program appropriate only for HG+ kids, when immigrant kids at all levels of abilities are thrown into the water with often limited support and expected to figure it out.

I am a non-native English speaker who immigrated to the US over a decade ago. I don't speak English at home, and neither do my US-born, non-HG kids (at least not within my hearing!). They started formal schooling in K in a well-established Spanish immersion program. Juggling academics in three languages can be hard to balance, but they are coming along rather well, considering their other challenges.

Our district does not have IQ requirements for entrance in K/1st (after that the only kids who can join the program are those coming from other immersion programs who can show they are bilingual and biliterate at grade level). They do have a language assessment to make sure the candidates are on track for language development in one of the two target languages.

For the OP, since the program is new and you won't be able to see it in action the questions to ask are:

1) How will the instruction be structured? 50-50? 70-30? 90-10? Spanish should always be at least 50%, although you also want to make sure consideration is given to transitioning out to... whatever comes next.

2) How are the kids selected? A program which is not 50-50 (50% English speakers, 50% Spanish speakers, with native bilinguals counting on both sides) will have a harder time keeping the immersion working outside of the classroom, weakening the program.

3) How are the teachers selected? You want teachers who are natively bilingual, or a teaching team with a native speaker for each target language. Finding those teachers can be difficult.

You need a good talk with the people designing the program, not with a teacher who clearly doesn't understand how immersion works.

Somebody made (and edited?) the point that since any child who is floundering in a public immersion program has a good chance of being yanked out, there is attrition and the classes tend to concentrate higher achieving students. That has proven true, in our experience.

And yes, there is a hit to literacy achievement (there are only so many hours in the day you can spend reading/working) in the early grades. Having crunched the NCLB test stats for our district recently, they catch up by 3rd grade. But that means that this is not a one year decision. You need to be able to commit to at least six (K-5) years of immersion.

I won't touch Bostonian's article with a 10 foot pole, because the wrongness, it burns :P But yeah, if your goal is the hamster wheel of NYC private school admissions you probably want to avoid the Spanish immersion program, and concentrate on.. test prep?

Even if you are not, my broader point is that English proficiency is much more important than Spanish proficiency in the U.S., so I would be willing to trade very little of the former for the latter.

Immersion programs are great to learn another language. I don't think that a HG or even MG kid who is gifted in Math or Science would do any better in an immersion program than the average kid. Because giftedness is not uniform and studying Mandarin or Spanish or French for 50% of their time may or may not help the gifted child. OP, if you feel that languages are a strong point for your child, then this program will help. If not, I would not bother. In our case, my son does speak 3 languages, but his strength is in Math and English. He takes Spanish classes, but is not in an immersion program because I felt that it might be detrimental to his learning style.
My niece and nephew attended a French immersion private school until the 8th grade when they switched to an all english high school. They were grade skipped twice and have DYS level IQs and are very proficient in several fields (she in ballet and violin and he in tennis and debate). But, the transition to mainstream high school was hard for them because they learnt math and science in French. They had Ivy league ambitions and the potential to get there and now they are facing the reality of applying to a state university instead. Their family feels that the immersion program was a mistake for their kids who were interested in the STEM fields.
So, consider your child's strengths and weaknesses before you take the plunge.

My eldest did French immersion for a number of years, starting at 4. I agree that immersion can be a great option for a HG+ kid who will be underchallenged when studying at grade level in his native language.

One concern I have about the program you described is that it's 100% Spanish for two years. DS's school was 80% French/20% English for the first two years (more English later). The English component was mostly reading and spelling (but they had to do math, too). I'm not sure I'd be too happy about zero instruction in English in an English-speaking country. Could you work with him at home?

A point in Bostonian's article reflects our experience, which is that DS definitely had a smaller English vocabulary when he stepped into a full-time English-speaking school. But he is HG or more, and it wasn't a big deal. He caught up without any problems.


This may be true in general (and often more than milliseconds), but it may not be true for everyone. I've noticed a difference in the way my DH and I operate when moving from one language to another. He's bilingual and he does hesitate at times when he's translating a story from German. I don't, even though he's way, way better than I am at German. I describe him as having a box in his mind for English and a box for German, whereas I have thousands of boxes for different words. He has to root around a big box of English to find, say Waage (scales). I don't, because Waage and scales are sitting right next to each other in the same mental box. Okay, this is really oversimplified, but you get the idea. The only occasions where I hesitate are when a term is idiomatic and doesn't have an equivalent in the other language.


That is deeply pathetic.

But isn't what happened to your niece and nephew the whole point of an immersion program. If gifted students are moving too fast then you can slow them down with extra language burdens. It's not just that what happened to your niece and nephew is a forseeable consequence of an immersion program, but rather, it is the intended consequence.

The problem, IMO, is with universities using industrial metrics like GPAs and bubble test scores to measure students, not with double-grade skipped kids who speak French and English like natives and are very good at non-academic pursuits. Admissions to elite schools should be cakewalks for kids like your niece and nephew.

Please see the very end of my last message in this thread.

My point is that you can slow down gifted students with extra language burdens, for sure. But, it need not be through immersion programs. You can send your child to afterschool programs or language schools on the weekend to learn a new language. But, if you teach science and math in another language (French, Spanish or Mandarin) for 8 years and then expect the child to keep pace with the general population who deal with science and math in the English language, then these kids, however gifted they are, tend to be disadvantaged. Unfortunately, it might affect their college prospects direly, as I have seen with my niece and nephew.

Direly? All you wrote earlier is that they were applying to state schools. Even qualified Ivy aspirants should also be applying to less selective schools, unless they get in to their first choice Early Action/Early Decision.

They are not even applying to the Ivies - and believe me, to them, that is a fate a lot worse than death! It is not all dramatics and they do feel badly about it.

Errr... yes and no.

There is a world of difference between becoming bilingual through immersion (and K really is at the late end for doing that), and learning two languages in a school like environment. I learned English at school. I spent over a decade doing all of my recreational reading in English. I have been in the US for nearly 15 years. There is no way you could mistake me for a native speaker.

Except for a few people with exceptional language skills, native-like fluency is nearly impossible to achieve outside of early immersion.

I am not going to try and argue your nephew and niece's experience, although I am a bit surprised that kids whose passion is math/science would have limited themselves to what was taught at school -- or were they able to get all materials for personal investigations in French? (and in that case I want to know who their provider is!) It certainly sounds like the school didn't its job properly (or were they being groomed for the French high school?).

I know our program spends a lot of thought trying to balance the needs of keeping as much Spanish as possible in the curriculum vs. making sure the kids are ready for English-only 6th grade.



Yes, that. It might mean that they won't have any native Spanish speakers in the program, which would be a red flag to me.

Most bilingual programs recommend going sequentially with early reading acquisition, to make sure kids don't mix up the phonetic rules of the different languages.


I think once you have the concept, adding the new word doesn't take much work (especially when a brain works with lots of side by side little boxes, like yours -- have you asked your kids about the way they do it?).

I must say that the quotes from the study the NYT quotes make me think that like most studies of bilingual acquisition in the US, the subjects in the study were mostly low income/education immigrants families, and the confounding factors are... many. Because my kids certainly learned "astronaut" and "rectangle" in French at home before they entered K (I spend a lot of time and money finding and importing books), and their (English-only, private) preschool did cover "spatula" and "squash" in English before they turned 4.

And to answer Bostonian's question about why would anybody want to learn a language other than English... Because some materials you are interested in can be accessed faster, and without being mangled by incompetent translators? Because you want to spend some time in a different culture and it is impossible to do so without learning how to communicate with others? Because it is fun??

People interested by more tangible rewards might want to look at this:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=8364

But yes, the US is a big country, and if you are not interested in Russian literature, Japanese manga, or falling in love with a German Swiss you will probably be fine sticking to English

DD only wants to learn English and gets really frustrated when we try to slow her down by teaching her our native languages. She is still exposed to all of her languages, sometimes for hours so hopefully, one day, she'd be interested in learning to speak them.

If we had immersion options, I'd certainly consider them but I have a feeling that DD would refuse to go.

My ds8 is in Spanish immersion. I kinda know he won't be bilingual/biliterate by the time he finishes 5th grade. Many reasons have contributed to that...he didn't start in K but in 1st instead because I didn't know about it. He skipped 3rd so there is another year he missed and the last factor is that he has no one to practice his Spanish with at home. The kids he plays with won't speak Spanish to him...only want to speak English.

So he has great pronunciation, he can read the words at grade level and maybe a bit above...but his comprehension lags behind and he has kinda given up because it is hard. He muscles through everything and does a good job but I don't think he will be bilingual in a year and a half unless we summered in Costa Rica or something this summer.

Something I have always wondered when people use immersion programmes to challenge gifted kids. If the child is bored with a maths concept well below their level, how is asking then to solve it and explain their working in a language they are less proficient in help? Wouldn't it just increase thefrustration?

My kid's program is language arts, reading, science in English and then language arts, reading and social studies in Spanish and then the Spanish teacher initially teaches math in English but also goes over it in Spanish. The math materials are in English but are available in Spanish too.

It's very easy to "imagine why one wouldn't try such a program with a HG+ kid". If they aren't particularly strong in languages, then it just strews obstacles in their path.

And parenting a child (especially a gifted child) is all about making their life easier?

For us multilingualism isn't a choice, but come on, millions of kids in the world, most of which are not gifted, manage two or more languages just fine. You don't have to be "particularly strong in languages" to manage it. Learning through immersion is the closest you can get to first language acquisition. Most human brains are wired for it as part of the standard package.

An important trait of giftedness is that the child is especially good at a certain thing. PG/HG kids have high rate of knowledge acquisition - so they can handle immersion programs easily. But, placing a HG/PG kid in an immersion program does not make sense all the time.
Which is why I too would not call immersion programs a total win - how does a STEM oriented PG/HG kid get acceleration when these subjects get taught at the "normal rates/level" in another language? What is the value addition of an immersion program for an accelerated History buff or a Computer Programmer? And what do the immersion students do for enrichment in their areas of strength which are non-language related? (I am thinking about enrichment clubs, contests - Destination Imagination type of contests, online programs, afterschool classes etc in math, science etc) And when do they transition to "mainstream" schools - after 5th or 8th grades? What is the transition plan, if there is one at all?

I think that if the gifted child is not strong in languages, then an immersion program introduces "busy-ness" into their school work rather than teaching them what they need at a higher level. This could make some parents happy because it might challenge their gifted kid to a certain extent and that is a lot better than no challenge at all. That is not a compelling enough reason.
But, if the family has ties or business interests in regions from which the immersion language comes from, then immersion programs are a good fit even if the gifted child is strong in non-language areas.

I think you're taking a narrow view of the points being made here. Overall, the biggest benefit is learning another language and learning about another culture in a way that mimics being inside it (during school, anyway).

As for your points about transitioning to all-English schools, I'm confused. All the French immersion schools around here (Northern CA, like you) all bilingual, not French-only (unless I've missed one?). They have to be, for a variety of obvious reasons, such as high school graduates wouldn't meet the admission requirements for UC and Cal State without classes in English and US History.

Plus, the K-8 schools all transition to 50% instruction time in English relatively early on. My DS's school (and others; maybe all of them?) teach math in both languages. PLUS, my DH did school in English and then moved to Europe as a young teenager. Math was the SOLE subject he had no trouble with because it's universal. Etc. So I'm confused about your claim that your niece and nephew had trouble with science and math because of French immersion. TBH, it doesn't make sense as presented (maybe you left something out?).

I agree with Val. All three of mine started in a French immersion school, and in the younger years, most of the instruction is in French. Most of the math was in French. They did not have any problems transitioning to the math in an English only school.

Their English language skills were fine too. While mine left the school in elementary, they had friends that went through middle school (the school ends with 8th grade). Those friends went to "English-only" high schools, and almost every one ended up at an Ivy or other elite school. of course, they were very bright kids, but the bilingual aspect did not seem to affect college admissions.

I agree with Val's post above this. My own children aren't in immersion programs (the programs here are filled via lottery and my kids didn't get in). However, I've known quite a few students who've gone through the programs K-12, and overall I'd say the whole concept is (imo) a good option for *any* child (HG or not).


The reality in our local schools is that the neighborhood schools do *not* teach accelerated STEM either in early-mid elementary (or even late elementary except in math). The students in our immersion elementary schools are eligible to take part in our accelerated math and pull-out gifted programs, so they don't miss out on any of that from being in the immersion program. I've also not heard (*ever*) a concern from our local parents that their children had difficulty moving directly into accelerated and gifted programming in middle and high school after going through the elementary immersion programs.


I have a relative who majored in history. She is particularly interested in one area of the world, and she specifically studied the language in that country (over and above what was required for her degree) because she felt it added to her understanding of the culture and it might help her in the future with career opportunities.

For a computer science major? I don't know that studying one of the less widely-used languages would buy anything in terms of career advancement, but then again, the immersion programs I'm aware of (Spanish, Chinese, etc in the US, French in Canada) all seem to be built around languages that are *widely* used in business around the globe. So it seems that it would potentially have a lot of future career value for whatever career a person is interested in ultimately.

And it's not all about future careers either. Learning a second language is *learning* - I see it as valuable whether or not you ever use it. For a lot of us, it's fun, and it's been fun for the kids I knew in the immersion schools. For me personally, learning French (the first "second" language I learned) helped me understand English grammar much better than any of my English classes had (I took my first French class in 7th grade).

And lastly I'll mention culture - our immersion schools don't just teach language, they teach culture. They have relationships with sister cities in other countries where the immersion langauge is the first language. Teachers in the programs are required to be native-speakers. In our full immersion programs, at least half the student body has to come from a family that speaks the immersion language at home as their primary language.

And... ok, I keep thinking of more things. Our immersion programs are choice programs here - no one student is in them because it's their neighborhood school - so the body of students participating has a much higher than average level of parents who are involved and care. No matter what the IQ level of the students involved, I've found that having parents invested in the school makes a huge difference in the program.

Those are all things that benefit *any* student, no matter what their future career choice.


They do the same clubs/activities as all the other kids in our district. This doesn't even make sense to me why this would be asked here? The after-school enrichment options are all dependent on volunteer teachers and students, not on language.


Our kids continue in their immersion "program" through 12th grade, but they are also in schools where they are mixed in for English-instruction classes with the non-immersion student body starting in middle school, so they have all options open to them re participating in honors classes etc.


I don't really think this is an issue. First, I suspect there are a lot of students (gifted and not) in immersion schools who are not "strong" in languages - the benefit of immersion is the way the language is taught (by immersion, and starting at a very young age) - which is said to be a more natural and easier way to learn a language. I also am somewhat of a mellow-gifted parent in that I have a kid, for example, who could have been studying college-level chemistry mid-way through elementary school. He didn't have that opportunity (even though he wasn't in an immersion program lol)... so he missed that opportunity. I don't see that as hindering his future chances for getting into a high-level university or actually as missing out on much of anything, other than learning high-level chemistry later on. I do think it's very important to keep our HG+ kids challenged and not bored in school, but I don't see immersion programs as getting in the way of giving our kids' enriched learning in elementary - instead I see them as adding enrichment through language. The thing that is *truly* standing in the way of HG+ kids learning at the pace and depth at which they can learn is more rooted in our school system (at least it is here) rather than in any one approach to learning. We just aren't set up to push our kids for maximum potential inside any of our classrooms, at least not until they are farther along in school, or with the exception of those districts that have really good full-time gifted classroom programs.


Honestly I've never known a family bother with enrolling in immersion programs simply for this reason, although it was suggested for our youngest dd as a way to help prevent her from being bored when she started kindergarten. I would have seen it as a potential positive, but I would have been enrolling her (if she'd gotten in) because I feel having a second language is a *huge* benefit in life for many reasons.


And this seems just a bit North-American-centric to me. Why not learn a language that is a primary language elsewhere in the world? We are quickly becoming an very global society. There are a lot more business people working today speaking Mandarin than speaking English as their primary language, for instance. Having a second language, whether or not your family has ties to that language now, may prove beneficial later on in a student's future career. And way back when I graduated from college in the dark ages... and was interviewing with companies for jobs that required absolutely no active use of a foreign language (I'm in a STEM field, btw)... the professionals who interviewed me *always* looked for several years of foreign language on my university transcript. If I was interviewing a prospective candidate for a position today in my field, for a position located within my English-speaking country with no need for any type of foreign language experience, if that candidate told me as part of their bio that they were somewhat fluent in Spanish (or any other language) and that they got their through going through a K-12 immersion program, that's one "something" interesting about that person that's going to set them apart from someone else. It's not going to get them the job unless they also have the top qualifications out of the potential candidate pool. But it *might* get them the job if there are 2+ candidates with identical job-related qualifications simply because I might perceive them to be well-rounded or interesting or whatever.

OK, that's enough from me on my soapbox... I think all I've really said in all of this is - there are a ton of good reasons to consider an immersion school if you are at all interested in it for your kids.

polarbear

Despite the famed US focus of your education system you seem to learn a lot more foreign languages. When I went to school in the 1980's 90% of high school students would have done no foreign language while the other 10% would have done a year or two of French. Avery small number may have done 5 years of French (3or 4 a year maybe). when I went to university in the 90's I did a 4 year chemical engineering type degree where every paper in every year was prescribed and no languages of any kind were included. The schedule was so crowded it would have been practically impossible to fit anything else in. The expectation was pretty much 13 hours a day 7 days a week.

Let me guess... you're an engineer?