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Portraits of Success
National Association for Bilingual Education (NABE)
Portraits of Success was a joint project of NABE, Boston College, and the Northeast and Islands Regional Educational Laboratory at Brown University (a program of The Education Alliance) from 1996 to 2000. It was a national effort, supported by a number of experts in the field of bilingual education, to develop a database on successful bilingual education.
Goals of the program:
- To fulfill one of NABE's missions of "identifying and publicizing
the characteristics and outcomes of successful bilingual education programs."
- To promote the implementation of quality bilingual education.
The programs listed below completed the selection process. This project is now over, but there is much still to be learned from these exemplary programs.
- Greenway Middle School, Transitional Bilingual/ESL Program
Paradise Valley Unified School District, Arizona
- A flexible 7th & 8th grade Spanish transitional bilingual and ESL program which accommodates not only Spanish speakers but students of several other languages. Content area subjects are offered in Spanish and sheltered-English classes. Teachers are certified in content area as well as bilingual education and/or ESL.
- Rachel Carson Elementary, Transitional Bilingual Education
District 299, Region 5, Illinois
- Pre-K through 8th grade urban school with 92% of Spanish speaking background students. It has a transitional bilingual Spanish program and a dual language pre-school program. The school as a whole serves the Spanish background students and their community. The principal and a number of staff members are bilingual. The arts are used to enhance academics, build community, and provide a multicultural environment.
- Madawaska Elementary School and Gateway Elementary School, L'Acadien du Haut St. Jean
Madawaska School District and MSAD #24 (Van Buren, Hamlin, Cyr Plantation), Maine
- A two-way French/English bilingual education program functioning at two neighboring school districts of the St. John Valley of Maine. Students in L'Acadien du Haut St. Jean develop fluency and literacy in two languages, meet or exceed district standards in all academic subjects, cultivate an understanding and appreciation of other cultures, and develop positive attitudes toward fellow students, their families and their communities.
- William Barton Rogers Middle School, Bilingual Program
Boston Public Schools, Massachusetts
- A 6 - 8 grade school with a Vietnamese transitional bilingual program. The program is fully integrated to the school. Bilingual teachers coordinate curricula with mainstream teachers in their corresponding curricular area. In some cases bilingual teachers teach mainstream classes as well. Bilingual students are paired with mainstream students in English-medium classes.
- Robert F. Kennedy School, AMIGOS Two-Way Immersion Program
Cambridge, Massachusetts
- A two-way Spanish/English immersion program housed at the Robert F. Kennedy School in Cambridge, MA. The program includes students in grades K-8. According to Jennifer Day, one lead teacher of the AMIGOS program, the members of the program are like a "family." English and Spanish component teachers work together to plan the curriculum. Each class is integrated with native speakers of Spanish and native speakers of English. There is "social mixing" at all grade levels; students are friends with students of other ethnic and linguistic backgrounds.
- Barbieri Elementary, Two-Way Bilingual
Framingham, Massachusetts
- The Barbieri Elementary two-way bilingual program offers native English speakers and native Spanish speakers the opportunity to develop first language and second language skills. At the same time, students learn all grade-level academic content. They also aquire understandng of their own culture and appreciation for other cultures as they learn together. It is a "differentiated two-way bilingual program," meaning that it allows for different ways of becoming bilingual for native Spanish speakers and native English speakers. The district's two-way bilingual program has been extended to middle school and high school.
- Brophy Elementary School,
Framingham Public Schools, Massachusetts
- The Spanish bilingual program started in September 1994 at Brophy Elementary School. The K-2 TBE program was moved out of its existing school into Brophy School at that time (Grades 3-5 were in another school). Initially, only grades K-3 were housed at Brophy. One of the goals was to create a full K-5 strand, which was accomplished SY 1997-1998 when the first 5th grade was opened.
Selection of programs was based on:
- Students' outcomes.
- School or program outcomes.
- Community response to the school or program.
For further information contact:
María Estela Brisk
Lynch School of Education
Boston College
140 Commonwealth Avenue
Chestnut Hill, MA 02467
Phone: 617-552-4216
Fax: 617-552-1840
Related Links:
National Association
for Bilingual Education (NABE)
The National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition and Language Instruction Educational Programs (NCELA)
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