Chinese, Spanish Immersion Coming to Hopkins Junior Highs

will expand its Chinese immersion program to in the 2014-2015 school year and add a Spanish immersion program to for 2013-2014.

The district already has a Chinese immersion program at 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 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 .

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.