Chinese, Spanish Immersion Coming to Hopkins Junior Highs
The Chinese program launches at West Junior High for the 2014-2015 school year. Spanish arrives at North Junior High in 2013-2014.
Hopkins Public Schools will expand its Chinese immersion program to West Junior High in the 2014-2015 school year and add a Spanish immersion program to North Junior High for 2013-2014.
The district already has a Chinese immersion program at Eisenhower Elementary called XinXing Academy. That program started five years ago, and a 2014-2015 junior high launch allows those first students to continue in an immersion program as they advance in grades, said Jolene Goldade, a school district spokeswoman.
The long-term plan is to bring the Chinese program to the high school, she added.
Hopkins does not have a Spanish immersion program. However, the International Spanish Language Academy is an immersion charter school within the Hopkins Public Schools boundaries, sitting on Shady Oak Road in Minnetonka. Like XinXing, that school tops out at sixth grade. A program at North Junior High would allow students there to continue in Spanish immersion without having to leave the district, Goldade said.
The immersion expansions are a natural outgrowth of an emphasis on world languages in the secondary study that reviewed junior and senior high school program requirements, said Diane Schimelpfenig, the district’s director of teaching, learning, and assessment.
Parents of XinXing students also assumed that Hopkins would expand immersion offerings to the junior high as students advanced in grades, she said.
Unlike at the elementary schools, students in the junior high immersion programs will not have every course in their immersion language. Instead, they will have two “content courses”—such as social studies, science or language arts—in Chinese or Spanish.
The district has not yet identified those courses because the immersion expansion is still in its planning stages, Schimelpfenig said.
Both programs will expand course offerings as they grow at the secondary level, the district stated in a news release.
Parents and residents in the district expressed strong support for world languages in a survey released in October.
The immersion programs also mesh well with an accelerated Spanish course called Juntos, Goldade said. That program encourages native Spanish speakers to take more rigorous courses and move into Advanced Placement programs—a focus of the College Board, which gives the tests, because Hispanics are underrepresented in AP testing.
In This article
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Hopkins Public Schools Independent School District 270
1001 Highway 7, Hopkins, MN -
Hopkins Public Schools, Hopkins West Junior High
3830 Baker Rd, Minnetonka, MN -
Hopkins Public Schools Hopkins North Junior High
10700 Cedar Lake Rd, Minnetonka, MN -
Hopkins Public Schools Eisenhower Elementary School
1001 Highway 7, Hopkins, MN -
International Spanish Language Academy (ISLA)
5959 Shady Oak Rd S, Minnetonka, MN -
Gene Singleton
5:59 pm on Sunday, December 4, 2011
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