In teacher Laila Hazan’s new preschool, children run around, hang out in the sandbox, play games and take naps — things most preschoolers do. Except for one thing. They’re doing it in French.
“Santa Barbara is pretty international for its size,” said Hazen, who speaks fluent French to her young son and about seven others while another teacher speaks Spanish.
Hazen, who traveled regularly for her former job in international finance, said it was easy to find immersion schools in Europe for her son, Myles. When she made the decision to settle down in this part of the world, she feared her son would lose fluency and not be able to have conversations with the French side of his family.
“I couldn’t find any language immersion programs for children,” she said. So, after a couple of years of research, she decided to get her teaching credentials and start her own school, Soleil Kids.
The school opened just a few weeks ago in a quiet suburban neighborhood in the unincorporated Goleta Valley. Her clients include families who want their young ones to learn French or Spanish, as well as those with kids who already speak French or Spanish and want to keep them fluent.
For anyone who has a child who can decipher the TiVo, the computer game console or the Internet with the blink of an eye, it’s obvious that many young children can pick up nearly anything with ease.
“They know that they’re learning several languages at once,” Hazen said of her small class. They’re learning to pick apart sounds and pronunciations and attach them to languages and meanings — the way a native speaker would, without the extra step of translation.
“They just don’t know that what they’re doing is different from most kids their age,” she said.
Most of the time, the children, ages 2 to 5, don’t even know that they’re learning. The curriculum, as it were, consists of play, arts and crafts, physical activity, storytime and naps. The only real language-intensive time happens during “circle time” in the morning and in the afternoon, when the teachers drill vocabulary.
It goes further than learning to speak another language, however. Studies have shown that children who are exposed to other languages, especially before age 5, build up their brains — physically and cognitively, giving them an edge in creativity and mental agility as they grow older, and even delaying the onset of age-related dementia.
At the moment, Hazen has a small class of eight children and is adding a few more every month. She is licensed for 40 children, but says she most likely would take up to 30 to keep things comfortable. As her enrollment grows, she may separate French learners and Spanish learners to teach them more effectively, although she says she would continue to expose them to both languages as often as possible.
“Many of the parents want both,” she said.
Noozhawk staff writer Sonia Fernandez can be reached at sfernandez@noozhawk.com.