Local preschool immerses los ninos

AUSTIN (KXAN) - In a West Lake Hills storefront, a half-dozen preschoolers fidget on the floor, singing songs, reciting numbers and colors and just generally being kids. Most of them never spoke a word of Spanish before their parents enrolled them in the Young Peoples Workshops Spanish Immersion program. They follow instructions issued in the language and engage in simple Spanish conversation.

The owner of YPW is a native Spanish speaker. Monica Moreno hails from Columbia. She moved to the United States twenty years ago and immersed herself in American culture and language. Five years ago, she and her husband, a native of Mexico, left New Jersey where they met in school, for Austin. The idea was for Monica to stay home with her children. She had an engineering degree, though, and she longed to put it to work. So she founded YPW and started selling games and toys grounded in science and technology. Her clients and customers, however, listened to her strong Spanish accent and wondered why she did not offer Spanish, as well. Their wish turned out to be her command.

Moreno offers a full-time Spanish immersion program for children ages three to five. Soon, she will include two-year-olds, too. Separate refresher and practice sessions help keep former students growing in the language as the get older. Parents love the program. "It's a true gift that a parent can give their child," said mother Holly Andrepont, "to raise them bilingual. It's an advantage that they're going to have later in life."

Another mom, Stacy Gilyan, agreed, "I think it's great when he's teaching me words that I don't know and I think it's wonderful."

A third, Jennifer Nelson, added, "I'll see my son who is almost four have a full conversation in Spanish and then know somebody near him doesn't speak Spanish and say the exact same thing again in English."

No one knows the value of this sort of thing, however, better than Moreno. Asked how fluency in two languages has impacted her life, Moreno laughed. "I have this business," she said. "I'm talking to you right now. It opens; it opens, like, for your job. You become, you have another skill."