As the number of Hispanic students in Idaho grows, so are dual language immersion programs — especially among rural districts in south central and east Idaho.
A half dozen school districts east of the Treasure Valley now offer dual language immersion (DLI) programs, giving students the opportunity to spend part of the day learning in English and part of the day learning in Spanish (or Mandarin, in one case). And more are looking into adding a program.
“Our presence is growing,” Omar Ponce, the multilingual programs director for Teton School District, wrote in an email.
To support the increasing number of DLI teachers, Ponce and other school leaders came together to create an annual summer conference and fill a gap for DLI professional development in the region.
That conference is in its third year and kicked off in Rigby Wednesday, as dual immersion teachers convened to network, learn, and share their passion for language and culture.
DLI teachers are in a “niche field,” so opportunities to connect with others in similar programs are essential, said Eva Craner, the spokeswoman for the Twin Falls School District. Twin Falls just added a DLI program last school year, and had nearly 90 students participate.
“We have a really high Spanish-speaking population in our community, so building communication skills between different segments of our community is really important for these students who are eventually going to be part of the workforce,” Craner said.
Susan Hayes, a DLI teacher at Teton Middle School, attended the conference and said immersion programs help students learn to “speak across borders.”
“It opens doors for the community to be a little bit more understanding and welcoming of other cultures and other languages, and drives home all the benefits you get from being bilingual,” she said.
DLI teachers usually work with a partner teacher, and “share” their students. Hayes recently met her new partner teacher, Meritxell Puig, who hails from Spain and is new to the district this year. Puig found her way to Driggs via Spain’s Visiting Teachers program, and will be there for three to five years. The two were looking forward to getting to know each other more at the conference.
The demand for DLI teacher training is likely to persist in south central and east Idaho. The districts with DLI programs — including Blaine County, Jerome, Twin Falls, Jefferson, Teton, and American Falls — tend to have higher numbers of Hispanic students and students learning English than the state average.
In Jerome, for example, 57% of students are Hispanic or Latino and 24% are learning English, as compared to 19% and 6% at the state level, respectively.
Idaho’s number of Hispanic students has trended upward since 2020. Last school year, there were about 62,000 Hispanic students in Idaho, or about 20% of students overall.
Thanks to a three-year grant from the Idaho Department of Education, DLI teachers can count on the summer learning opportunity for at least two more summers, Ponce said. This year’s conference was also funded in part by The Idaho Association of Teachers of Language and Culture.
Idaho Education News data analyst Randy Schrader contributed to this report.
