Tet Festival celebrated by Portland's Vietnamese-American community
Students of Van Lang Vietnamese School: (from left) Chan Khue Dinh, 6; Thien Khanh Nguyen, 6; Priscilla Nhu Tu, 5; Ivy Le, 5; and Thien Kim Huynh, 5, get pictures taken before their traditional Vietnamese dance performance during the 2013 Vietnamese-American Community of Oregon's Tet Festival at the Oregon Convention Center in February.
(Motoya Nakamura/The Oregonian)
Although Truong Doan speaks Vietnamese to his two children at home and sends them to Vietnamese language classes on the weekend, they're still far from fluent in his native language.
So when Doan, who emigrated from Vietnam 20 years ago, heard about efforts to bring a Vietnamese language program to
, he quickly threw in his support. This week, the Beaverton resident told the Portland School Board that such a program would make kids more successful in both English and Vietnamese.
"By sending kids to immersion program at an early age, we're going to make them more successful at listening and reading proficiency for both languages," Doan testified to the board in support of such a program. "Two languages are always better than one."
In the coming years, Portland Public Schools may become one of the few school districts in the nation with a dual-language immersion program for Vietnamese. Supporters from the Vietnamese community say the effort could keep their culture alive in younger generations and help students with increasingly globalized industries; district officials say the effort could help better serve English Language Learners, though the program will be open to all students.
Immersion programs, which have been growing in popularity in the U.S., teach core subjects in both English and another language to foster fluency in students. Portland Public Schools has long been a leader in language immersion within public schools, debuting Spanish immersion classes at Atkinson Elementary School more than 25 years ago. The RAND Corp. nonprofit think tank is
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Local interest in language-immersion programs has further blossomed in Portland Public Schools and surrounding districts. Portland Public Schools had about 3,700 students in language-immersion programs in the just-concluded school year, and the number will jump past 4,000 next year.
The district already teaches Mandarin, Spanish, Japanese and Russian in language-immersion programs. Officials are hoping to add one Spanish and Mandarin language-immersion program each in 2014-15, in addition to another language that is less commonly taught -- and many are hoping that will be Vietnamese.
Portland schools officials say Vietnamese could be one way to help Vietnamese speakers in the English Language Learners program, which totaled more than 520 students. Within the district's English language-learning population, Vietnamese follows Spanish as the most widely spoken language at home.
"One of the things we know is that we're not serving our English Language Learners as well as we could," said Melissa Goff, executive director of teaching and learning. "The other thing we know from research is a dual-language program ... in their native language is the best way for them to develop their second language."
Michael Bacon, the district's assistant director of dual-language immersion, said the program will also help those students realize their native languages are an asset, and other English-speaking students can use the program to reap the practical and cognitive benefits of bilingualism.
Oregon is home to more than 26,000 Vietnamese-Americans, according to 2010 Census numbers. In Portland, the Vietnamese community banded together over the issue after district officials approached leaders with the idea, according to Hoi Tran, the vice president of the Vietnamese Community of Oregon. The district has a strong proponent for the program from Van Truong, the district's English for a Second Language director, who emigrated from Vietnam in 1975.
Tran said Vietnamese leaders had a meeting in May to talk about the program, and the president then created a letter. They sent the letter out to Vietnamese newspapers and have volunteers set up tables at prominent markets and churches in the community. Since then, the group has collected more than 1,800 signatures, Tran said.
The community presented those signatures to the board in June, and several Vietnamese immersion supporters have testified since then. She hopes such a program would enable students to get engaged and contribute more to society, she said.
"We hope that with the Vietnamese language-immersion program," Tran said, "they will understand the culture and learn more and have a connection to their families and grandparents."
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