Bilingualism essay

BILINGUALISM IN SALUDCOOP SCHOOL, IT IS REAL OR JUST A FALACY?
Written by Elisabeth Blanco Sarmiento (2009)

Is it possible to have bilingual school here in Bogota in the public Education?
Bilingualism is a big concern on these days. Although we are an underdeveloped country we are trying to implement bilingual education in public school. In the past only people who study in Privatebilingual schools have the opportunity to be bilingual or those who traveled abroad but now days the government is trying to implement bilingualism in Bogota, maybe because
English is a commercial Language or for political interests. But what is the reality about this proposal, what is occurring inside the public school where I work?

Well, I am going to describe some interesting facts about how theproject has been implemented. First of all the secretary of education has been investing millions in teachers training , in this moment there are several universities involve in this process but what happen after the training process? Is there any kind of articulation between what teachers are doing and the policies inside the schools?

Unfortunately we have a negative answer for thisquestion. In this paper I am going to focus on my School, the name is Saludcoop Norte and it was thought to be one of the first public bilingual schools.

In fact, 80% of the teachers are taking different kind of English training depending on their level, but what happens after a teacher finishes the process? The reality is that it is a very hard work to try to convince the Principal who does notspeak English to implement any kind of changes. First at all, the administrative staff focuses all their energy in discipline problems and do not care and even do not know what teachers have been discussing about what bilingualism means at school. In the afternoon the coordinator do not know English. I consider that is very hard to talk to them when they do not use the same code as we do. But notall the team have the same characteristic, fortunately the primary coordinator from the morning shift knows English and try to do something to help the project become a reality.

Although we received the training when we arrived to our schools in order to implement such a nice ideas we have to face a lot of difficulties. First of all we receive the pressure of our daily duties, then sometimesthe administrative are not interested in changing, they are comfortable with the traditional school and they do not want to make an effort or in some cases they are afraid because they do not know English and they feel they are too old for learning.

Another issue is that we need to study what bilingualism means and the kind of
Bilingualism that we want tocarry on. Some people do not have thetime or are not interested in compromise themselves. One reason is because there is a lack of confidence in the process as we do not have support from the people who take decisions.

I consider that in this moment we need special conditions for implementing bilingualism; we have to make many changes in the school programs. Besides that we need to work in teams in order to reach our goals andto have administrative staff that really cares about this process.

In our school we will begin a weak form of bilingual education. We will have some hours of English classes in High School, 5 hours in sixth and seventh grade and gradually we increase the English hours year per year, one hour more. All of these depend on the Principal decision. Sometimes we suggest but it is hard to obtainwhat we need. The proposal at the beginning was to have 10 hours per week but they decide to have only five and only in sixth and seventh grade. In this moment teacher from primary have to teach 3hours in English, this is something good, because before it was only one, however there is a week point, not all the primary teachers have proficiency in English.
Something positive is that there are...