Juntos students have been part of an educational model that shifts the system to build on the assets of the Spanish speaking Latinx immigrant community around San Miguel Elementary and Columbia Middle School (CMS). The goal is for both native and non-native Spanish speakers to become bilingual, biliterate, and bicultural. The first cohort of Juntos students transitions to high school this year. The families in the Juntos Spanish immersion program are diverse and this educational model has different meanings for students from different backgrounds. If the articulation to high school goes well for student from all backgrounds, then students from the Juntos program could be a catalyst for closing opportunity gaps, increasing numbers of first generation college applicants, and changing the face of academic achievement in the high school district as these students progress through advanced level classes, bringing with them their middle school classmates, friends, family members, and neighbors.

Juntos families reflect the integrative objectives of the Juntos program, including multiracial US raised English speaking families, bilingual Latinx families from varied socioeconomic backgrounds raised in the US or Latin America, and monolingual Spanish speaking immigrant families with potentially varying levels of parent formal education and socioeconomic backgrounds (as well as multiple other areas of nuance in identity and intersectionality). Families are from both the San Miguel/Columbia Middle School neighborhoods and the wider Sunnyvale community. Students from different backgrounds tend to have different educational needs, trajectories, and outcomes. Spanish centered education has different meanings for families from different backgrounds.

Juntos families made an intentional choice for our children’s education that may have felt like a leap of faith at the time we enrolled our pre-kindergarten students in the first cohorts of the new Juntos dual language immersion program which started in 2015, especially for the first cohort of incoming 9th graders. For Spanish speaking immigrants, this may have meant the perceived risk of their children falling behind and not assimilating into the language and culture of US opportunity. For English speaking families, it may have meant the perceived risk of opting for a school either within their neighborhood or across town that might have involved unlearning the ways we are often socialized to choose a “good school.” The unifying goal for all Juntos students has been to be bilingual, bilíterate, and bicultural in a setting of “warmly demanding” academic excellence, pride, connection, and belonging. We have been part of an educational model and school culture where the system has shifted to center and build on the assets of the language and culture of a neighborhood and people that have been historically marginalized and underserved by traditional US educational systems. 

We are deeply invested in this model of education and very interested in the outcomes, not just for our own kids but for our kids’ schoolmates as well. For many students, education can change their families’ life trajectories and the transition from a TK-8th grade dual language immersion program to a supportive high school environment may mean a continued love of learning and academic achievement based on the strengths of a community’s history and heritage. When our school districts coordinate it can help articulating systems better serve ALL students. It is exciting to see how this program can influence student opportunities for belonging and success!