We visited two schools that have an 81% of Spanish speakers students. Most of the students were from Mexico or were born in USA but their parents are from Mexico. Most of the students spoke English very well, even better than us. My impression of the schools was very positive, there is a huge difference with the schools of Chile. For example the classes that we saw were very small only 5 or 10 students versus the classes of Chile were we can have up to 44 students.
One of the things that I really liked was that the teacher has his or her own classroom that he or she can adapt according to their students and the class given. We can see a very positive support from the principal in both schools and a real concern for the students' needs and one wonderful thing that I liked was the parents work, how can they also learn English and keep up with their sons and daughters.
There was a lot of discipline and respect. The schools were very clean and welcoming, there were positive signs, the classes were very quite and the students worked on their assignments, something surprising to us, just because of the same issue: class size.
The school at Bridgeport had better academic results that the one in Brewster and I think that it has to do with a more personalized class, a closer teacher-student relationship, the classes at this school were a little bit smaller so that is a big help.
One thing that I found strange was that in the schools especially in Brewster there weren't any Spanish speaker teachers or a native speaker teacher from a Latin country. I found it strange because when you have a school with 81% students from Mexico it is a necessity to have at least one teacher that speaks the language for multiple reasons that are very obvious.
In my opinion the trip was very helpful for us, we now can see the difference from schools in USA and in Chile and what it is being done here in terms of second language learning.
