Principal Gabe Costa joins kindergarten students and teacher Maria Jose Jimeno Miedes in their classroom. The Spanish Immersion School has 33 kindergartners in two classes.
Mansfield City Schools’ Spanish Immersion School, now in its eighth year, is accepting applications for its 2016-17 kindergarten class.
The school opened in 2008 with an initial kindergarten class of 11 in the Raemelton building. After adding a grade level in each succeeding year, the school has a current enrollment of 158 in kindergarten through sixth grade in the former Brinkerhoff building at 240 Euclid Ave.
The Spanish Immersion School will welcome parents to a community open house on Thursday, Feb. 25. The schedule includes classroom visits and a question-and-answer session from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m., a choir program at 2:45 p.m. and a parent meeting at 6:30 p.m.
More information about kindergarten enrollment is available by calling the school at 419-525-6321.
This year there are 33 kindergarten students divided in two classrooms.
Principal Gabe Costa said immersion programs are the fastest growing and most effective type of foreign language instruction available in United States schools.
The goal of language immersion is for students to become proficient in a second language and develop an increased cultural awareness,” Costa said. “Students develop proficiency in the second language by hearing and using it to learn all of their school subjects rather than by studying the language by itself. The new language is the medium of instruction as well as the object on instruction.”
Children of kindergarten age are developmentally ready to learn language, Costa said, noting that a child’s brain has twice as many synapses (connections) in the brain as an adult.
“The young brain must use these connections or lose them,” he said. “There is a window of opportunity in which a child learns a first language normally. After this period, the brain becomes slowly less receptive…When children wait until high school to begin a foreign language, the job is much harder.”
Costa said the benefits of learning a second language at an early age include:
-- A positive effect in intellectual growth while enriching and enhancing a child’s mental development.
-- Leaving students with more flexibility in thinking, greater sensitivity to language and a better ear for listening.
-- Giving students a head start in language requirements for college and increasing job opportunities in many careers where knowing another language is an asset.