Monolingual kids, monolingual teacher - two different languages.

I think you should make an urgent report to the principal (or if they are unreceptive, to the Superintendant or the Board of Ed) that the school has an emergency need for a bilingual adult classroom helper to come in for at least half the day. Maybe the School Board can draw from the pre-vetted pool of substitute teachers, or quickly hire a student teacher. Your report should stress the need to move swiftly. The children are entitled to an education they can understand. This is increasingly accepted in a variety of situations. If gifted kids have a right to gifted classes in public schools then Spanish speaking kids have a right to learn in a way that is appropriate to them. That is the way I'd make the argument if there is any resistance. It is not as if a couple of kids in the class don't speak English -- in that case, other kids could help them in the process of immersion. But the classroom will be in a state of confusion. No one (including non-parents) pays taxes so that kids can watch videos all day with no way to communicate with their teacher. Immigrants kids have just as much a right to education based on their needs as any other kids.

Kindergarten and Grade One are not too young for full language immersion in the classroom--but it needs to be done well and with attention to good ESL pedagogical practices. To me it sounds like you and your colleagues have not been given adequate support, resources, and possibly direction, given the specific needs of your student demographic. This description of https://education.alberta.ca/parents/resources/youcanhelp/solution/gentle.aspx may be helpful. If the purpose of these classes is for the kids to eventually become proficient in English, you and your colleagues should conduct lessons primarily in (simple, clear) English. That doesn't mean you can't also use Spanish songs and cultural materials, though. Perhaps your non-Spanish speaking co-teachers could conduct the class in English but combine that with recordings of Spanish songs and stories if they don't feel comfortable speaking/singing in Spanish themselves. Speaking as a former ESL teacher, you'd be surprised at how quickly people, especially kids, pick up a second language in an immersion classroom. The key is repetition, simple words and phrases, lots of gestures, charades, pictures, and realia (real-life objects to help kids associate words with meaning). In my experience, the first two weeks are definitely the most difficult. Ideally, I think you and your colleagues should be provided with some training in immersion language teaching techniques, but if you are not given that support you may be able to find some internet and print resources using those "early immersion" and "ESL/ELL" as keywords. However, as both Sequence and the early immersion article both note, the kids should always have access to someone who can speak enough of their language to communicate in emergencies.

If I'm reading this right, I *hope*, these kids do have regular bilingual teachers, it's just the ones who teach the library materials who don't speak Spanish? If it's really just for a temporary thing, I would agree with asking for a translator for that time period, although you might just see if there's a way to keep the regular teachers around for that purpose. These kids have a legal right to the materials being presented in a way they can understand, and the schools receive federal funds to help do that; don't think that you need to solve this personally. If the other teachers are not willing to learn even the basic Spanish needed to provide instructions to kindergarten kids, then translation should be provided. For classroom management purposes, there is no substitute for this. These kids should not be left alone in a room with only an adult who cannot communicate basic instructions to them in the event of emergency. I mean, imagine that there's a fire or something in the building during that period, and you've suddenly got 35-40 kids who don't speak English and an adult who cannot direct and reassure them. This goes beyond just your ability to teach them how to use the school library.

I live in Toronto, and we have a really high rate of immigration from all over the world. It's not unusual in certain neighbourhoods to have kindergarten classes where almost none of the kids speak English AND they don't share a language in common with other students. Some of our schools have signage in 5+ languages, and that only covers the most common languages in that particular school. As you can imagine, the first few weeks of kindergarten is pretty intense for everyone in those classrooms. In one of these neighbourhoods, Thorncliffe Park, we're actually just opening http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/all-kindergarten-school-promises-to-relieve-jammed-thorncliffe-park/article590233/:The Thorncliffe community, near where the Don Valley Parkway meets Don Mills Road, is a dense pocket of mid-rise buildings that serve as a landing pad for many recent immigrants from Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, China and elsewhere … [A]s many as 95 per cent of students speak a language other than English at home. (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/all-kindergarten-school-promises-to-relieve-jammed-thorncliffe-park/article590233/)So, it's pretty common here to have language barriers between teachers and new students. Perhaps the materials for teachers on this topic by our Ministry of Education will be helpful: http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/document/curricul/esl18.pdf: With special considerations for kindergarten on page 24 http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/document/kindergarten/index.htmlSupporting English Language Learners in Kindergarten: A practical guide for Ontario educators is designed as a resource and tool for teachers, administrators, and other school staff as they support ELLs in achieving the overall expectations of the Kindergarten program. This resource provides a rich source of research findings, practices, and strategies that can be put to immediate use in the school and the classroom. You will also find valuable information on working with families and communities, working with the ELLs in your Kindergarten classrooms, and working as a whole school to provide a quality beginning school experience for ELLs.http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/document/esleldprograms/guide.htmlSupporting English language learners: A practical guide for Ontario educators Grades 1 to 8, 2008, is designed to support and help teachers, principals, and other education professionals in elementary schools work effectively with English language learners. This resource guide provides a rich source of practical techniques, research findings, and strategies that can be put to immediate use in the classroom and in the school. It also contains valuable information on working with families and communities, and as a whole school, to enable English language learners achieve curriculum expectations while they learn English.http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/curriculum/secondary/esl.html

Since you asked that we reference solutions that you can pursue without outside help... (I assume you know you SHOULD be able to get outside help here, but for whatever reason, this is not an option.) I would see about partnering with a local college service organization (or even high school if it's at the end of the day/around lunch/etc. when it might be possible for students to come over). Try and find bilingual interpreters who would be willing to come in and assist - ideally every day, but it would seem that at least some days a week (or having different people come on different days) would be useful. I would imagine this could be great for Spanish majors or even education/early childhood majors who later hope to work in a bilingual environment. Another option might be an adult service organization, depending on the level of bilingual speaking in your area (we had a Lions/Lioness club in the town where I grew up, and older folks would sometimes volunteer in the school). And finally, another route to try would be parents - presumably the parents of kids who speak only Spanish are going to be Spanish-speakers, so you would need to seek out parents of older kids ... but, maybe the PTO/PTA could help locate stay at home moms who could be willing to pitch in a few times a week, and then you can rotate people through. Another option would be to do some research on techniques used in immersion classrooms with young children. Some friends of mine sent their kids to an immersion French pre-school -- neither their kids nor the other kids spoke French coming in, but the pre-school was run in French on the idea that kids have flexible brains and can pick up languages easily. I am sure they used specific techniques to ease kids into this environment, but it did seem to work and they did learn the language! If you could incorporate this type of instruction into your lesson plans and get the other teachers to use them, it could help both you as teachers have something productive to do for the period, and help the kids speed up their acquisition of English skills (I assume this is the ultimate goal of a bilingual classroom?). Honestly -- even starting a new language in high school and taking it for only 45 minutes a day, I could still get to the level of VERY basic communication pretty fast...since these kids are in bilingual education presumably all day, you may not have this problem for THAT long. No, they won't be fluent - but there should be more overlap as time goes on if they are getting adequate instruction the rest of their days in their classes.

Just one more: I think pitrified's answer gives great pedagogical ideas for bilingual immersion. But these kids are in kindergarten. They are five years old! And they deserve to have an adult in the class who they can actually speak to.

Are any of the students fluent English speakers? That might affect some of the answers.

None of the students are fluent English speakers. In the K classes, about 2-3 students speak very basic English - hello, how are you, can I use the bathroom, and classroom vocab (chair, desk, etc.) In 1st grade, there are a few kids in each class who can ask and answer questions in English, and about 10 or 15 who speak basic English and can understand simple instructions (sit down, raise your hand). The kids who speak a little English are very good about helping their classmates (and me!) translate, but especially in kindergarten (and especially with totally non-Spanish-speaking teachers), it just isn't enough.

Is there anyone in the community who could volunteer to translate? There may be, for example, some bilingual retired people or bilingual recent university grads who might be willing to put in a couple of hours each week helping out.