Welcome NCMom!

Our DS4.5 has been enrolled in an immersion French school for a year and a half. Like you, we are (basically) monolingual - I *can* speak French, if forced to, but DS certainly hasn't gotten his accent from me.

The issues are a little different for us since our DS began when he was three, and we were less concerned about academic material during the day. As he gets older we are going to be worried about level of instruction in math for sure, but so far he reads primarily in English anyhow, so reading at school might well happen at grade level, at least for a while. We have had some behavior problems and acting out, but nothing particularly serious (I hope!); and I have to say that he has absolutely *loves* learning French. We visited a gifted school last week and were pretty impressed at what the kindergarten class was doing until we went back to the French school for comparison, and they were doing the same things only in French! And beautiful loopy cursive! So we're definitely sticking with the French school for a bit.

One thing to know about language immersion schools is that there's a sunk cost issue: the standard recommendation is that a child needs to stay in for 5-7 years in order to maintain fluency. So if you're thinking about the language immersion school because it's an easy way for the child to become bilingual (and who wouldn't!), realize that the benefit might well not accrue if you try it for a year or two and then leave. Even if the child makes very good progress during that period. The teachers tell us, for instance, that DS speaks French as well as or better than a native child his age. But if we stopped now it's not just that he would be stuck speaking as a four year old; he might well lose it all. This is not a reason not to do it, but we're confronting now the reality that there's a strong incentive to make things work at the French school instead of up and leaving. We're hopeful that the school will be responsive to his academic needs when the time comes, and we're getting very involved. But it does give us the feeling of a bit less freedom. Well worth it, in our minds, for the advantage of a second language. But just so you know.

Hope this helps. Feel free to PM me if you'd like more details.

BB