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For parents, staff and students at the John Stanford International School, it's never too early to go global.  The diverse public elementary school in Seattle holds classes in Japanese, Spanish and English, focuses on world cultures, and even allows some students to attend school in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.  All the while, students maintain impressive scores on Washington State assessments. (See our full story about the John Stanford School here.)

I recently caught up with three teachers from John Stanford, Maria Buceta Miller, Margretta Murnane and JoAnne Uhlenkott.  They shared some of the secrets of their success.

You can download the entire 20-minute conversation here. You can also read through a transcript of highlights below. 

Alternatively, you can download any of the following excerpts from the full interview:  

International Learning Experiences in a Diverse School (1:46)

At John Stanford, Global Citizenship Starts Early (1:34)

The Nuts and Bolts of Language Immersion (2:54)

How Do We Know the Language Immersion Strategy Works? (3:37)

More Than Just Skin Deep: Authentic Exposure to Language and Culture (3:43)

The Importance of Professional Development and Collaboration (2:54)

Keeping Parents in the Equation (2:19)

Major Lessons of the John Stanford Experience (3:33)

Transcript of Interview Highlights
PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS:  You all made a decision to focus on international education at this grade level.  Why do you think it's important to have this focus?

MURNANE:  One of the [directions] that we've been taking it is in teaching our younger kids especially to have compassion for children who are different from them.  Because if you're going to have some international perspective, the first step you have to have is compassion and empathy for people who are different from you.

PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS:  You mentioned earlier, when you were describing the school, that you have Spanish immersion and Japanese immersion in which the children actually spend one-half day in the other language.  I was wondering if you could spend a little more time describing your language immersion strategies and why [immersion is] important.

BUCETA MILLER:  The kids spend half of the day learning half of the curriculum in Spanish or Japanese.  In the lower grades--in kindergarten and first grade--they learn math and science in Spanish or Japanese, and they learn language arts and social studies in English.  In the immersion class, we also integrate a lot of language arts because [the students] need to read and write in the immersion language [starting their] first year in school.

The immersion program works very well when you start at an early age, like kindergarten or even earlier, because it's a very natural way of learning a language.  We don't teach the language itself, like would be [done in] a regular language class, but we teach it in context.

PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS:  Do you have evidence that this has had a real impact on your students over time, that they really do acquire the language and become comfortable in it?

MURNANE:  The benefit to the students, for example our Spanish [and Japanese] speaking students [who have] English as their second language, is that the confidence level that they develop participating in our program is far and above what was happening in our program when it was a regular program.

PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS:  But do you ever worry that their reading scores in English will suffer?

MURNANE:  Our reading scores as a school... Statistically, we have been high and above the district pretty much every year. 

BUCETA MILLER:  When the WASL is a concern--and they now have the science WASL--then in fourth and fifth grade some science is being taught in the English class and more social studies is being taught in the immersion class.

UHLENKOTT:   The WASL is a state-required standardized test.

MURNANE:  We have been switching around the curriculum so that the English teacher is teaching or supplementing what's happening in the language classroom, so that the students are getting the vocabulary that they'll need for those standardized tests.

PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS:  How do you try to give your students authentic exposure to another culture or country? 

UHLENKOTT:  One way we do that is through our art program effort, in addition to the way they do it in a classroom.  I'm the head of the Art Committee, and the Art Committee has decided to rotate through [a focus on different regions of the world] on a six-year basis.  This year we're in North America and the focus is Native American [art].  Last year we were in Asia, and so we had a Chinese musician come in and work with the kids, Chinese storytellers come in, and a Chinese dancer come in.  As they present their music and their stories and their dance, they present culture as well.

MURNANE:  There's a couple other things that we do, one of them being that we utilize the students in our classrooms, if we have some native-speaking Spanish children in the Spanish classroom.  The same with the Japanese.  The fact that we have pretty much all native speakers as our teachers.  Not all entirely, but we try to hire native speakers on the Spanish and the Japanese sides.

UHLENKOTT:  With the IAs also.

MURNANE:  So that we have people from those cultures [in the classrooms].

And the other thing that we do is we have a school trip where we take kids to Mexico.  Not the whole school goes, but we've had 25 kids who go down to Puerto Vallarta for a week.  They attend school in Mexico for half a day and have a very authentic experience down there.

PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS:  I imagine you have to give the staff at the John Stanford School pretty special professional development to make this work.  Is that true?

UHLENKOTT:  It seems like there's an awful lot of professional development people go through.  They don't get paid extra to do it, though.  It's just to do a better job.

BUCETA MILLER:   In schools like ours, where the kids move from one class to another one in the afternoon, teachers really need to work together very well.  That's something that we all do here.

PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS:  Do you have time set aside in your calendars or your schedules for this kind of teamwork and collaboration?

UHLENKOTT:  About one Wednesday afternoon a month is the staff meeting, which we call the "Brave Band" meeting. 

BUCETA MILLER:  And lunchtime.

MURNANE:  Lunchtime.  We have a teacher that's in school right now and I've been telling her, "You have to go to lunchroom at lunch," because there's so many things that happen in our lunchroom.

PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS:  If you had one or two major lessons you wanted to deliver to the public education community, what would those lessons be?

UHLENKOTT:  My first lesson would be that it's wildly successful teaching those kids the languages at a young age.

I think another thing is that for our school, we can't run on the district funds that we're awarded.  We have to have fundraisers to pay for the IAs that work in the immersion classrooms. 

MURNANE:  There is a lot that's needed to make [our program] happen, but I think that if it's done well it creates a vibrant learning community that just can't be equaled.