Bilingual Education Programs
The topic I am interested in researching for a further thesis is the effectiveness of the bilingual education program for second language acquisition. I am interested in writing about this because in my school there are so many issues in the bilingual program. Our bilingual students are not improving significantly. Only few students are being moved into the mainstream English program. I have to question myself about this. Why is that happening? Is the bilingual program effective in my school? Why it is/it is not? Perhaps, the bilingual program is not being implemented efficiently in my school to help our students learn English. We have students with six years already in the program when the goal is to transition in three years. I would like to explore more possibilities for the bilingual population in my school. Something I really know, and is probably one of the biggest causes of this failing is that our parents do not have strong academic foundations to support their children. That is a general rule. My parents work all day, and those that are partially at home can’t support their kids in English because they don’t have at least minimum skills in this language. We are offering English classes to the adults, but that is not helping significantly. We are also giving computer classes to the parents in my school to help them close the digital barrier between kids and adults. What else should we do? What else should I try? I feel trapped by the idea that parents support makes 50% of the kids learning, but this is not happening in my student’s homes. I got that feeling. In addition to this panorama, we are facing another more serious issue. This is that many of our kids are children from immigrants that left their countries 5 or 10 years ago and now they are bringing theier kids to live with them. Some of my kids came by themselves trying to find thier parents and escaping from their difficult realities in their countries. How can we support parents-children relations? So, perhaps I should change my topic, and research more about the following:
- The impact of Parental Involvement in scholars learning.
- Creating a more learning community.
- Identity of Immigrant children.
- Immigrant children in the U.S.
My literature review should support me find ways to impact student’s learning. Unfortunately, there is nothing I can do to change the reality of this kids in my school, but I can contribute to their learning and help them succeed academically.
