User talk:Ehern004

Hi Edgar/Bebe, I enjoyed reading about you and your educational philosophy. I too would like to be a teacher that makes a difference in my students' lives, and I greatly support your ideas of bilingual education. Even as young as they are, elementary students can pick on the fact that now in the 21st century, it is not always enough to be proficient in just one language. In the classroom, children cannot and will not learn subject material if they cannot understand the language it is being instructed in. I think this is why students from minority-language backgrounds have higher dropout rates, and lower test scores. If children are taught a second language such as Spanish when they begin school, they will have the ability to learn a great deal more of a language than if they only took a few years of it in high school. For example, they could learn nouns and verbs in elementary school, and sentence structure in middle and high school. I also think students can learn a second language more proficently when they are young. Afett001 (talk) 01:24, 27 May 2009 (UTC)