Two-way immersion education has been in existence in the United States for 50 years, but its growth in popularity is a more recent phenomenon. The number of schools participating in TWI programs has been on the rise for the past 20 years with over 300 schools nationwide and 200 in California. The majority of these programs are Spanish/English programs in public elementary schools. Moreover, this immersion program is modeled off of the Canadian French-English Immersion Model which has an even longer history.
Bijou Community School’s Two-Way Immersion Program is based on a two-way immersion educational model, the goals of which are:
- High academic proficiency in two languages
- High educational attainment
- Mastery of the state’s content standards
- Multiculturalism
- Life skills
- Community service
In the area of language arts, students speak, read, and write fluently in English and Spanish as measured by the state-standardized assessments and teacher-developed assessments. Students have the same access to the academic core curriculum as English-speaking students in an enriched English-only program.