Article Did the Students Learn? A Dual-Language Story During the Pandemic
James Robinette
Teaching during the pandemic offered many different challenges. Teaching in a dual language school offered even more challenges. As a two-way dual language school, teaching and planning for the success of the students and staff doubled the number of challenges. The questions then raised is “Did students enrolled in the dual-language program fail to learn during the pandemic?” Or “What does the data tell us about the effectiveness of the dual-language program?” To answer this question, one must identify why there was a need to deviate from a traditional model of teaching in the dual language program in our district. The Problem Identifying how the students were going to get a proper dual language education in alignment with the program model was the task at hand. As a two-way dual language school with a 50/50 model, the students learn half their day in English and the other half in Spanish. English Language Arts and Spanish Language Arts are taught daily, math instruction in the program is taught daily in Spanish in grades K-2 and English in third grade. Throw in the fact that the district offered a remote learning model as well as a half-day hybrid model, tripled the difficulty 68
