Alamance-Burlington School System’s first class of the Dual Language Immersion program is preparing to graduate college this spring. 

The program was instituted in some ABSS public schools through Participate Learning, an educational consulting firm focused on global education and primarily teaches students Spanish. 

Elon senior Annelise Weaver was a student in the Dual Language Immersion program at Elon Elementary after she and her family moved to Alamance County when she was in the first grade. 

“They just fully immerse you in Spanish,” Weaver said. “All of my foundation stuff I learned in Spanish.” 

One of Weaver’s classmates and fellow Elon senior Jessica Walker said almost all of their subjects were taught in Spanish. 

“Everything was taught in Spanish,” Walker said. “I learned my math in Spanish and my social studies and science. Our entire day was in Spanish, except for our specials classes.”

Throughout elementary school, Weaver and her classmates in the program would spend the whole school day learning and communicating in Spanish. 

“We were together from K-12,” Weaver said. “Everything that we did was together, all the classes. We bonded in a lot of ways, being the only kids in the school in the program who were speaking Spanish.” 

In addition to spending all of their time with each other and only speaking and learning Spanish, ABSS had special teachers specifically for the Dual Language Immersion program. 

“All of my teachers in elementary school came from Spanish speaking countries,” Weaver said. “Colombia, Nicaragua and El Salvador. We got to learn first hand about their language so that was really cool.”

According to Walker, the teachers of the Dual Immersion program would come to America on a visa. Walker also said she thinks having native Spanish speakers teach them pushed them to use their Spanish more. 

“I think it was a lot better for our language learning because we were learning from a native speaker,” Walker said. “Our native Spanish teachers were more focused on how people communicate in Spanish, more conversational, not about focusing on the structures.”

While the students in the Dual Language Immersion program are fully immersed in the Spanish language in elementary school, they abruptly transitioned into more English speaking classes starting in middle school and continuing throughout high school. 

“After elementary school we went into middle school and only spoke Spanish in one class.” Weaver said. “It was almost like I was having to relearn everything that my peers in other classes had already learned.” 

Despite the difficult transition from elementary to middle school, the advanced Spanish skills of the students in the Dual Language Immersion program lead to them taking higher level classes in middle and high school. 

“In eighth grade, we would all go to the high school, which was right up the road from our middle school, and we would take Spanish three with the high schoolers that were also taking that class,” Walker said. “My sophomore year, I took AP Spanish language and culture with other upperclassmen.”

Walker said the cohort also participated in a dual enrollment program through Alamance Community College where they were able to get their interpreters license. 

Regardless of the difficulties that students had within the Dual Language Immersion program, learning a second language has given students a valuable skill — speaking another language. 

“It allows me to be more marketable,” Weaver said. “I’m a senior now, I got to start looking at jobs and having this skill makes me a better candidate for the work I want to do.”

Aside from speaking Spanish and the interpreters license, Walker has found that being in this program has allowed her to help others who can’t speak English. 

“I've been able to help people on the street,” Walker said. “I have encountered in real life people who don't speak English, where I've been able to speak Spanish with them. So that's always really cool.”

ABSS now has four Full Immersion programs at Alexander Wilson Elementary, Elon Elementary, EM Yoder Elementary and Smith Elementary, and two 50/50 Immersion programs at Eastlawn Elementary and South Graham Elementary.