I have some friends whose kids attend a public Spanish immersion program and they really like it. Anyone have experience with these programs? What do you think?
I have one son in a Spanish immersion program. All programs are set up differently. Our program half the class has Spanish as a first language and half has English as a first language (and the child can be Hispanic and be part of the English half of the class because sometimes several generations in after moving to our state the children are not fluent and the parents want them to be). There are a few odd children that have neither Spanish nor English as a first language and they will be learning English and Spanish as the second and third language for the child.
Half their day is taught in English and half in Spanish. I think if there weren't high stakes testing starting in third grade they would run it a bit differently but they feel they have to work both languages at the same time equally. They claim my son will be biliterate and bilingual by the end of 5th grade.
I will say that as a gifted child in elementary school learning a second language is the first time he has had to exert any effort at all to actually flex his learning muscles. Luckily he isn't a perfectionist because sometimes he gets it (say on a Spanish test or worksheet) and sometimes he has absolutely no clue what is being asked of him. He just plugs along giving it his best shot on those types of things (i.e. takes a wild guess). There have been a few bumps (tears) along the way as far as encountering things that are HARD (looking at you Spanish book report) but that is exactly why I wanted him in this program, so that he encounters HARD now and not freshman year of college.
