Elementary Student Immersion in World Languages

Anchorage is a culturally diverse city that embraces everyone; over 90 different languages are spoken in Anchorage public schools.

In addition to World Language Studies offered at all Anchorage middle and high schools, opportunities for world language study by elementary students include:

• Partial immersion programs at Chugiak and Government Hill (Spanish), Sand Lake (Japanese), Turnagain (Russian), and Rilke Schule Charter School (German).
• Bi-weekly lessons in Chinese language and culture at Scenic Park.

World Languages Program teachers come from all around the world...

Next generation Internet connectivity will allow our public school World Language programs to become truly immersive. Elementary students in immersion programs would have access for half of each school day to their peers at their sister schools. The Japanese immersion program at Sand Lake travels to Japan every other year – Google-scale bandwidth would allow the students to get to know each other before they travel abroad, and then stay in touch with their friends after they return home.Immersion in a foreign language from a very early age has been shown to be the best path to multi-language fluency.Google Fiber for Communities will enable a whole new dimension of language immersion for elementary students. We believe the impact of this program will be greatest on our youngest students, and it can have the greatest long term impact through applications that target the youngest members of our communities.