Being bilingual is considered a superpower at Broad Rock Elementary School in Richmond’s Southside.
Students in kindergarten through second grade are selected through a lottery system to take part in the school’s two-way dual-immersion program, where they receive instruction in both English and Spanish.
It’s Richmond Public Schools’ first and only dual-immersion program, which was implemented during the 2021-22 school year under the district's Language Instruction Educational Program.
Multilingual instruction coordinator Victoria Pierson said the program prepares students to be bilingual and biliterate.
“It doesn't say that English is superior to Spanish or Spanish is superior to English, but that both languages are equally valued and respected, and that we get to strengthen both at the same time,” Pierson said.
Under the program, students learn core subjects like math, science and history in both languages, as well as how to read and write.
Southside connection
Broad Rock was chosen for the pilot program because of the high percentage of native Spanish speakers — ensuring the program’s equity, Pierson said.
Principal Teya Green has been a part of Broad Rock staff for 20 years. She’s witnessed the school’s population grow and change, reflecting Southside’s community. Latino students make up over half of the student population.
“We offered Spanish as a resource, but the parents, they kind of reached out. They were more inquisitive about language,” Green said. “When [the LIEP team] brought this opportunity for a dual-language immersion program to me, I thought, let's take advantage of this for our students to provide equity, diversity within our school.”
Joshua and Lesvia Rivera’s son Caleb is a first grader and a native Spanish speaker. The Riveras said their family feels included at Broad Rock and that their son looks forward to the school day.
“He loves coming to school, and he loves his classmates and the teachers,” Rivera told VPM News in Spanish. “He loves learning alongside his friends and he tells me they are his family, too.”
Rivera said the bilingual learning model at school also reinforces what she teaches her children at home.
“That they don’t lose our native tongue because it’s very important,” Rivera said. “And that way, they can communicate with our families who only speak Spanish.”
Caleb Rivera told VPM News his favorite part about being bilingual is translating. In class, he enjoys story time, when his teachers take turns reading in English and then Spanish.
“Because then if I didn't know Spanish or if I didn't know English, I can [still] understand,” the first grader said.
Success beyond the classroom
“You would think, ‘Oh, it's just Spanish speakers going into this program.’ Absolutely not. Any student can be bilingual and any student can learn to become bilingual,” said dual immersion lead teacher Hannah Batdorf.
She said Broad Rock’s program has already shown significant growth in English proficiency for students learning the language, asmeasured by the WIDA ACCESS test — which is given to all English language learners across the U.S. every year.
“Students who by second grade have only taken math in Spanish are taking tests in English and having huge, huge successes,” Batdorf said.
Beyond that success, Batdorf said she finds joy in seeing English speakers in the school who are not part of the program speak in Spanish — indicating a broader cultural shift.
“That shows me that we're making a difference, even if they're not specifically learning Spanish in the classroom,” Batdorf said. “They're seeing this change is happening in the school.
Savannah Gordon, a first grader and native English speaker, told VPM News her favorite part about learning Spanish is “that it helps me learn a lot when I talk to people that [are] Spanish.”
One of her favorite words is “hola,” which Gordon said is a great way to say hi.
“And queso — that’s because I really love cheese,” she said.
Her mom, Briande Gordon, said she’s noticed the benefits of dual-immersion learning in her daughter going beyond the classroom.
“She's always been very confident,” Gordon said. “But patience, I think it's shown her a lot of patience and allowed her to understand that everybody's different, and what that looks like, and how you treat everyone the same — no matter how different they are.”
Gordon would like to see RPS extend the dual-immersion program through high school and hopes her 5-month-old daughter can enroll in the future.
“I think that this is the age where they can absorb all of it, and they can get into music,” she said. “You learn everything about the culture, the food, the dance, and when you [merge] it into your lifestyle, they tend to adapt to it a lot quicker,” she said.
Bilingual boom
In Northern Virginia, districts including Fairfax and Arlington have been offering dual-language immersion programs for over 30 years. In Arlington, Key Elementary School accepted the first class of students for its Spanish immersion program in 1986.
The Virginia Department of Education told VPM News that statewide there are currently 86 dual-immersion programs in 16 districts — nearly doubling since 2014.
That trend is in line with the growing number of dual-immersion programs nationwide. Research shows that as of 2021, more than 3,600 programs exist in the U.S. Eighty percent of them are Spanish programs, pointing toward multilingualism becoming widely accepted.
Noticing those trends is what led Pierson, a former RPS teacher, to question why the district didn’t have a similar program.
“I was using bilingual teaching strategies and had started to see that there were programs in other districts in Virginia and across the country that were using this bilingual model,” Pierson said. “I started to ask our leaders in central office, ‘Why don't we have any bilingual programs?’”
Her question resulted in a grant proposal. Ultimately, VDOE awarded RPS a school innovation grant for a year of planning in 2020. A second grant to fund the program pilot was later awarded.
“That’s what motivated us to bring a Spanish-English dual-immersion program to Richmond to meet the needs of those students who are speaking Spanish at home and learning English,” Pierson said. “We want them to be able to learn both simultaneously and not lose their Spanish.”
Students who come to the U.S. speaking another language often have to put it on the backburner and focus on learning English, Pierson said.
“We have known for a very long time that bilingualism has so many benefits,” she said. “That people who are bilingual have stronger cognitive abilities, they're better at verbal reasoning and executive functioning. There's even studies that they have higher levels of empathy and they're able to connect with their community on a higher level.”
Tomorrow’s students today
One of the challenges RPS is facing with the program is recruiting qualified native Spanish speakers as immersion teachers and retaining students to sustain the immersion classrooms.
“Our population is also a little transient,” Green said, “So, keeping students and keeping our numbers high, because we want this program to be a legacy.”
But Green said despite the challenges, the community response has been positive, and the students have formed a bond.
“The students — they have mutual respect for each other,” she said. “Now, sometimes they're not always just the student. They get to become the teacher in this program because they're teaching their peers, their language, and there's appreciation for English and Spanish.”
RPS is planning to expand its dual-immersion program to a second elementary school in the near future. And at Broad Rock, the district plans to add another dual-immersion grade level.
“Next year, we'll be in third grade,” Batdorf said. “Our hope is that we will move into third, fourth and fifth, but then middle school and high school in the coming years.”
