Unlocking the Power of Bilingual Education with Founder Eric Franzen
Episode 22
Lisa Hassler
Welcome to The Brighter Side of Education. I am your host, Dr. Lisa Hassler, here to enlighten and brighten the classrooms in America through focused conversation on important topics in education. In each episode, I discuss problems we as teachers and parents are facing and what people are doing in their communities to fix it. What are the variables, and how can we duplicate it to maximize student outcomes? In this episode, I discuss the benefits of bilingual immersion programs. How can a dual language education impact student achievement? According to the 2022 Census Bureau report, the increase in people who spoke a language other than English at home outpaced the increase in the total US.
Population. The overall population grew by approximately one half, between 19 82,019, while the population who spoke a language other than English at home grew threefold over the same period. Over the decade between 2009 to 2019, the share of the US. Population five years old and over speaking a language other than English at home grew from 20% to 22%. The largest numeric increase was for Spanish speakers 30.6 million more speakers in 2019 than in 1980. Studies funded by the Department of Education have delved into the effects of bilingual education on student achievement, stating the benefits that extend far beyond language acquisition.
Researchers indicate that students immersed in a bilingual environment demonstrate enhanced cognitive skills, including improved problem solving abilities, critical thinking, and creativity. These students exhibit greater flexibility in adapting to new situations and a heightened awareness of cultural diversity, leading to increased empathy and tolerance. Moreover, bilingualism has been shown to positively impact academic performance across various subjects. Students proficient in multiple languages often outperform their monolingual counterparts in areas such as mathematics, reading comprehension, and even standardized tests. The cognitive flexibility developed through bilingual immersion programs equips students with invaluable skills that transfer beyond language skills alone. Join us on this enlightening journey as we discuss the power of bilingual immersion programs and their positive impact on student achievement.
Whether you're a parent seeking the best education for your child, an educator exploring innovative approaches, or simply fascinated by the wonders of language, this episode is sure to inspire and inform. Joining me today to discuss bilingual education is educator and administrator Eric Franzen. He is the founder of Ideal School, a cognia accredited, dual language international online school serving K through nine students from over 20 countries in real time. Welcome to the show, Eric.
Eric Franzen
Thank you so much. I really appreciate the invitation. Thank you.
Lisa Hassler
Yeah. So glad you're here. This is a really interesting topic. I think it's very timely. A lot of people are going into online education right now, and this really is very unique. Can you tell us about what led you to opening a bilingual school?
Eric Franzen
Yeah, absolutely. I worked in public education from teacher to administrator for about 16 years. And I think originally before that, I had lived in Guatemala as a volunteer for a couple of years. And that's where I learned a love for Spanish, and I learned a love for a different culture, and I learned a lot about myself, and I wanted to help people understand the potential that every human has. I learned that and I wanted to pass that along to students, pass it along to teachers. And I just kind of went through my time and as a public school employee, as kind of thinking of myself as a servant leader.
And so back in 2018 is when we incorporated because I saw that there was a need to have a change in online education and I saw public education as a system that I was not going to be able to fix. I was never going to get to any position that didn't exist, a position really to fix it. And my wife and I have two children and Spanish is part of our lives and is important because we have family who live in Latin America. And I've seen how it's given me job opportunities. If I wasn't bilingual, I wouldn't have had the jobs that I had.
And I see that that's opened up windows for me. And I wanted to create a place for my own children to have friends and teachers in real time that cared about them and that they could become bilingual in a safe environment. Wherever you're at with Internet.
Lisa Hassler
So now your school is named Ideal School. What does that mean?
Eric Franzen
It seems like a simple name. It actually took us a long time to think of the right name, but to me, Ideal incorporates. It's ideal for not only the students, not only the parents, but the people that work in it. Because I saw many times that there were things that I disagreed with, with how professionals were treated. And so I wanted this to be a place where it's collaboration amongst the teachers and myself. It's a work that it's not like they work for me, that we work for each other, we work together. And the parents, we work for them and so they have a voice.
And for me, I think that's what education should be about as a collaboration amongst all the stakeholders.
Lisa Hassler
That sounds actually ideal.
Eric Franzen
That's the name.
Lisa Hassler
It's a good name for it. Can you explain what the bilingual immersion program is and then how does that fit into your school?
Eric Franzen
So we actually you can visit the center for Applied Linguistics website and we'll talk about two way dual language immersion. And that's what the model that we follow, which means that we have two languages, english and Spanish. We have a combination of native English speakers and native Spanish speakers. And we have a target language for each of the subjects the teachers teach in that target language, the students are encouraged to work and to interact in that language. And we use a model of we have ten minutes of direct instruction, then we have small group breakout and then partner breakout individual work and then come back together.
So it's not like a traditional school. Many times I have to sit and get to sit down and listen to the teacher talk, but it's actually interacting with partners who might speak the other language that you're learning. So that's kind of the idea behind a two way immersion, that you have a combination of native English and native Spanish speakers and that you're learning the language within the context of the academic language. You're not separating the academic from the grammatical.
Lisa Hassler
Right, right. So it's very different than if someone was to be just attending a Spanish class. Nothing like that.
Eric Franzen
I started my career doing that where you would teach Spanish but using English.
Lisa Hassler
Right, right.
Eric Franzen
And that's not effective. I mean, all the research shows that dual language immersion is the most effective. You know, it probably you've seen the graph where it separates itself from like, Ell or English language learner programs where there's this big gap, the academic gap, the monolingual students and then these other students who are learning the second language. So dual language actually bridges that gap. And so they actually, I think you mentioned at the very beginning the intro, that the research shows that students who go through such a program are better prepared for college and they actually perform better.
And actually on our website, we talk about that. Not only that, but you have improved career opportunities here in the United States who doesn't know of the benefits of being bilingual in Spanish? Brain development. Right. Research shows a brain development when you learn a second language and then early graduation, like, we were just talking about that. The students actually graduate college earlier that go through a bilingual program.
Lisa Hassler
Yeah. You had a lot of information on your website about the research and the benefits to it. Like, one of them I've seen was the improved cognitive skills that may delay the onset of Alzheimer's disease and dementia. That was pretty impressive study. And higher earning potential, 5% more improved social skills. So there's a lot of really good research that has been done on bilingual education. And your website has all of those reports available. Some articles have been written up on that. So that was very nicely done. If anyone is wondering about what exactly is the research behind it, you have all of it on your website so parents can easily access to see the benefits for their child.
Eric Franzen
You have done a really good job researching us. We've worked so hard. It's been a labor of love. And it's not me. I don't say me at all. Matter of fact, I don't think you even see my face except for a podcast that's on there. I don't advertise myself because it's really not about me. It's about a team and a vision that we all have, a shared vision. It's like building a house. We've been building it since 2018. And before that, my career built it to be able to do this. So I appreciate you recognizing that.
Lisa Hassler
Thank you. I also wanted to touch base on some concerns as an educator would be the summer slide. You actually have a year round calendar year for your school year, and you break it into cycles. Can you talk about that?
Eric Franzen
Yeah, absolutely. Everybody in education knows there is a summer slide. And also, I remember as a kid, I hated going back to school in the fall. Oh, my gosh. My birthday is in September, and I always hated it. So with us, we find that it takes away the anxiety. It's a continual cycle. So we start actually this year, it's on my birthday, September 25, and our first week is orientation Week. So all we talk about is how to use the dashboard, what are the routines, what are the expectations, what are the norms, how do we communicate and how do we use the tools?
So just for the first week, that's all we do. And the classes are live Monday through Thursday. We have extracurricular activities on Fridays, which are we have social groups, art classes. There's open office time with the teachers. So if you need any help, you just drop in and they're there to help. And then Fridays, we encourage students to do their homework if they didn't do it during the week. Friday is a great day to do that. Then next year we're piloting a music program. It's going to be super, super awesome. It'll be a third grade to start, but we're doing a pilot program where it's actually going to extend the day 45 minutes Monday through Thursday.
And the kids are going to be producing music, collaborating. They're going to have responsibility to do a part, and then they're going to put it together with technology. And we have a coordinator who is a music director of a university on the East Coast. So that's exciting. So it's a five week cycle and then one week off. And at the end of those five weeks, you have a conference with the teacher. The parent will know exactly how the student with reports and graphs, data. Then they go off for a week and they enjoy whatever because there's learning to be done outside of the school day.
So they go off for a week and have fun. Come back another five weeks. One week off, Christmas time, we have three weeks off, and part of that is in Latin America, that's their summer. So they have a three week summer break in South America. Then at the end of the school year, we're done, officially August 31. We have three weeks off this year. This is our first year. We're doing a summer language camp. So we're ending the year on August 15 this year. And then we have a two week summer language camp where we're just going to have fun using the language, but not in what we traditionally do, it's going to be cooking.
One of our teachers is a professional chef. Other ones are like dancers and different things. We have these little menu of things that kids can rotate around and participate in.
Lisa Hassler
So you have teachers from all over then. They're from North America. South America? That's pretty amazing. So a lot of native Spanish speaking teachers as well. So I could see where the cultural diversity has to make for a very enriching classroom experience.
Eric Franzen
Yeah, I was just in a meeting today and we were adding up all the years of collective of our teachers, all their experience, and we have well over 200 years of collective experience in education. And some of them, one of them has over 30 years and is actually an accreditor for that Cambridge program for people in Argentina, professionals that want to qualify to teach English in the Cambridge system. She's actually one of those accreditors qualifiers. So we have really high level. Matter of fact, I want to say we have a math science director who he did, like, a three year fellowship at the National Cancer Institute in Florida is a doctorate in some I am sorry, I can't top my head.
But in medicine or I'm sorry, science has a doctorate in some field of science and I can't tell you what it is, but really high level. So we've been able, and this is just patting all of us on the back, that through having this really sincere desire to create a space that is safe, that is fun, that's engaging, that's ideal, that we've been able to find magnetize to people, high level people that have the same vision and they want to really help. And that's the real thing. That ideal is about helping. It's not about ourselves, it's about helping.
We know that education is the most important factor in a society. Without it, we don't have anything else. That's you don't have doctors, you don't have lawyers, you don't have anybody, unless you have an educator, a teacher that cares. And that's what we're trying to give a different way to do. I'm just I could go on and on. We're very proud of it.
Lisa Hassler
Well, I think that a testimony to your caring and commitment and wanting to help. What you're doing down in Aruba, and you stated that you wanted to build schools that are portable for the poorest of the poor, and you're working with the refugees in Aruba. Do you want to talk about that?
Eric Franzen
Yeah, absolutely. So this September will be, I think, going on four years now, supporting a refugee school in Aruba, which is an island country north of Colombia. I think it's a territory of the Netherlands. But they have a school where they have mainly Venezuelans, and we've been helping them in an Asynchronous program where they have what they call learning coaches. And we supply the material, we supply the testing, the homework, the assignments, and they have a physical person that's there guiding them, helping them with the technology, and they otherwise wouldn't have that opportunity. So we're really happy to get to do that.
And another exciting one, I was actually working on it today, is there's a school in Venezuela that is partnering with us, very excited about actually tomorrow. They're starting to enroll their enrollment process, but we're going to be teaching them 45 minutes classes and it's going to be conversational English. So it'll be Synchronous focusing on conversational English.
Lisa Hassler
Do you see that you're going to be doing more of refugee support in the future?
Eric Franzen
Can you see yourself doing so? Our big goal, our big vision is I want to go back to Guatemala and I want to create portable schools that are free. It doesn't cost students anything, but I want to take it to the really remote parts of Guatemala where the kids just don't have an opportunity. And we want to give them a great in person experience and then use it as a training ground for teachers who want to work at Ideal because we do have a very strict process in order to know how to be a teacher. It does take time, but I really want to use that as kind of a training ground for more teachers and to give students an opportunity because like I said, it opens up doors, opens up your mind.
And I really, really love the people in Guatemala and perhaps that moves on to other countries, right.
Lisa Hassler
You never know where that's going to lead you. You're also supporting public school students and homeschooling. Can you talk about that?
Eric Franzen
So, yeah, we actually this year started supporting a school in Illinois. This year I'm actually collaborating with a large district here in Washington State. And I think that that's going to springboard more and it just depends on what the project is. But asynchronously we can support like we do in Aruba Synchronously, we can do that like we're going to be doing in Venezuela. It just depends on it. We have such a flexible, knowledgeable, experienced team that can support schools in any way that needs to be done honestly. And I just want to make this clear, I don't have anything negative to say about public schools.
I just think that Ideal is here to support families and schools in a way that's not really been done before, in a bilingual way. My experiences in public education have helped me. I don't believe in burning bridges and I've wanted to make it really clear. It's about education, it's about kids. It's not me. And it's not about person feeling about one way or another. I have a good friend of mine who is in public education and I really admire him, and I'm working on collaborating with his district. And then they'll springboard some other districts.
Lisa Hassler
Here in Washington because bilingual education is not necessarily common. You don't come across it often in the public school sector. And so I was actually fortunate enough this is 25 years ago, and the public school system in my area at that time had a small K through two dual language immersion program. And my cousin was actually the kindergarten teacher. My son was able to go to that school. We were thrilled with it and I really saw him blossom during that time. We ended up moving and that was so sad because the school district that we had moved to had nothing like that at all.
So that's when his bilingual education ended and he went to your traditional Spanish class once a week when he got into junior high. This opens up an opportunity for parents to be able to expose their child to a bilingual education that a lot of times you wouldn't have the ability to do if your public school didn't offer that. And I don't know of any private schools in my area that offer it as well. So how would a parent know that bilingual education is a good fit for them and their family?
Eric Franzen
Yeah, also, I think that I left off the home school part of it. Yeah. We have several families who are home school families, and so they can choose, like, I want a little support in math. I want support because you teach science and Spanish or Spanish language art, so yeah, we absolutely. And they're integrated with the rest of the students who are with us the full day, so it's not like they have a separate class. They're part of the school. Absolutely. So any family that's just looking for one subject or two, we have that on our website.
You can see those options. Absolutely. We also offered this year after school Spanish and we did after school English, which was more kind of conversational than the typical class.
Lisa Hassler
Yeah.
Eric Franzen
So your question was, how does a parent know a bilingual education is right for them? Yeah, I think the great thing about our model is it's inclusive of everybody, regardless of their proficiency level. And I think it's like music, I'm a big believer in music that it develops your brain. So being part of a bilingual education, it's going to develop your brain at a rate that you wouldn't normally whether you use it in the future or not. But it definitely helps the development. It definitely helps with you in a lot of aspects, honestly. And since Spanish is a Latin language, I mean, if you're a science lover, I know for me, it helped me in biology classes, different science classes in college because I could figure out and make connections quicker to different terminology.
That wasn't so foreign because I had learned Spanish. So I think bilingual education really I don't see any downside to it. I think anyone we've had students with autism, we've had students with different disabilities, and it works for them as well. I think it's inclusive of any situation.
Lisa Hassler
That's good to know. I hadn't thought about that from that aspect. And so that's good to hear. Now, you are accredited and recognized in 87 countries. You have offices in Washington and Florida serving children, mostly in north and South America with live lessons. And so what's next besides now going to possibly Guatemala? Where are you thinking?
Eric Franzen
What we want to do is we're trying to move ideal to increase the enrollment so that we can offer schedules that would be conducive of many different time zones. We'd love to have an office in South America, and then we've been asked to consider going to Europe. There's a group of students, I think especially in Poland, who would love to have an online school. And actually, believe it or not, a lot of Europeans want to know, so so that's kind of like in the next five years, maybe go to Europe, then have an office in South America, and then have the enrollment number that we need to have separate divisions within different time zones.
Lisa Hassler
Yeah, I could see where that would be a challenge. You have to be able to have those life lessons.
Eric Franzen
It is. That's a challenge. We have family in Europe right now. We've had families, and we have family actually in Israel, and that's a challenge. And it just depends on family's ability to make adjustments. But it's a matter of growth, and we want to keep Ideal school, a family owned and like a school operated and not become a corporation. Keep it ideal. Right. So we're trying to grow it organically.
Lisa Hassler
Yeah. All good things.
Eric Franzen
Yeah. We hope that your listeners do visit us, and definitely I would be happy. We give a discount for any family that heard this podcast. Put your last name in the discount code, and we will give you a discount for having listened and gone to our website.
Lisa Hassler
Oh, my gosh. That's amazing. I wish something like this was around 25 years ago. I would have been able to continue it.
Eric Franzen
Yeah, well, me too. I wish that I hadn't had to have built it. I would have been happy to have my children in it.
Lisa Hassler
Do you know of any other school that's doing this? I haven't heard of anybody else.
Eric Franzen
No. Honestly, not to be prideful. No, we've looked there's nobody doing it like this. We have actually a comparison chart of other schools to have Cognia accredited, which maybe American families don't know what that is, but that's like the highest. It's like the gold standard of international accreditation. They own three of the six accrediting firms in the US. Wow. They've been around longer than any of them internationally. They have agreements with the ministries of education in 86 or 87 countries. They're the gold standard. And I could tell you, having worked with them, they're a partner. I look at them as a partner because they help us keep equality, because we have to go through a process.
And it's not just every five years, but it's like we have a committee committed every year to looking at where we're at on meeting those standards.
Lisa Hassler
Right.
Eric Franzen
And they're in the business that we're in, so they know the language and there's no baloney with them. They know what they're talking about, and so they're partners. And I think if you go outside the US. And you look at schools who are Cognia accredited, they're very expensive. They can go up to 30,000 a year. Ideal school, we try to make it affordable, try to make it balanced. So that's very affordable in the US. It's a little costly in South America, but it's not as costly as typical cognitive accredited schools. Yeah, it can be a lot more.
Lisa Hassler
So the gold standard in bilingual education you are is that's amazing. Congratulations.
Eric Franzen
I have a hard time accepting that, but I do think that we're definitely trying and we have a great team. We bring humility. We're real about everything, and there's nothing corporate about us. We really care about students and families, and we feel that we're providing something that's a necessity. We did this prior to COVID, had no idea COVID was going to happen. And it just kind of opened up people's eyes to a reality that online education, especially in Latin America, was a possibility. Yes, it's hard. A lot of online, they don't do this. I haven't seen this because it's hard.
It's not easy to have all those.
Lisa Hassler
Synchronous lessons with all the different time zones across different countries. You guys are doing it.
Eric Franzen
We are. And it's really cool. Like, our own children, they have classmates from 7000 miles away and in between, and I think that's super cool. You get to learn about different countries. Your teacher, my daughter's had two teachers from Argentina. She's had a US teacher. Next year, I think she'll have a Colombian teacher. She'll have two Colombian teachers. But it's cool to have teachers the same diversity.
Lisa Hassler
You are opening their worlds.
Eric Franzen
Yeah, absolutely.
Lisa Hassler
Well, thank you, Eric, for joining me today to discuss the benefits of bilingual education. To contact Eric Franzen or learn more about Ideal School, you can go to www.idealschool.education. The call to action is to unlock the potential of bilingual immersion programs to empower more students to become global citizens. If you have a story about what's working in your schools that you'd like to share, you can email me at drlisarichardsonhassler@gmail.com or visit my website at www.drlisarhassler.com and send me a message. If you like this podcast, subscribe and tell a friend. The more people that know, the bigger impact it will have.
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