Speaking of Elephants in the room, my daughter speaks German fluently since her Mother is from Germany. She has taken at least 2 years of Spanish in Middle School and 1 year so far in High school and will take at least 1 more year. The problem though is they do not teach them how to really speak Spanish. These kids forget everything they learn. They need to restructure the curriculum.
Well the Spanish your daughter and I learned at Seaside is a joke. I know they just recently implemented an option where a student could, in 8th grade, take Spanish for credit if he/she passes a test.
But the fact that they require 6th and 7th graders to take Spanish for no credit just shows that the school acknowledges that their Spanish curriculum is just in place for show.
Spanish 1 is supposed to be for kids who have not taken Spanish previously. But, Seaside requires you to sit through two years of Spanish before taking Spanish 1.
Thats why we forget everything, because all that we learned was simple vocab and culture.
Edit: I should add that everything else at Seaside was a great experience for me and I absolutely have nothing but great things to say about the teachers and the overall program (Actually, a teacher I had back at Seaside is now the focus of one of my essays for college applications). The only thing that never made sense to me was the odd Spanish curriculum they had.
