As Kenneth C. Williams, former educator and founder of Unfold the Soul, shared with our team in February, success means teachers ensuring students, regardless of label, meet high expectations. He referred to those expectations as “the bar,” and encouraged us to develop a clear understanding of the essential skills and knowledge students MUST possess in order to be successful in the next grade level. Once defined, Williams stated, our business involves getting ALL students to and through the bar.

At our upcoming Leadership Institute (April 19) for addalingua partner school administrators and point people, we plan to spend time exploring “the bar” for students in quality dual language programs in order to align our thinking and practice to what recent immersion research suggests about student outcomes. To help guide that process, we’ll be taking time to work through addalingua program standards.

Each quadrant consists of a foundational principle common to quality dual language programs. Within each quadrant, four “power” success indicators highlight standards that support attainment of dual language immersion education’s threefold goal. While our materials and learning opportunities have been (and continue to be) developed based on these quadrants, we’re looking forward to working through the “why” and “what” behind our thinking to help strengthen these collaborative relationships that ultimately expand a school community’s internal knowledge base and capacity for growth.

We’re excited to work alongside this dedicated group of program leaders over the weeks and months ahead to help align program and classroom level practices with research-supported quality quadrant success indicators.

If you’re not yet an add.a.lingua partner school, but you’re interested in learning more about how we help our partner schools pursue quality and set the bar for their immersion programs–we’d love to hear from you.