FAQs

To give them a richer educational experience:

• While IB programs cultivate internationalism, they also adapt to the local environment and allow students to maintain a strong sense of cultural identity.
• Students are taught to be active learners, well-rounded individuals and engaged citizens, who gain practical experience of being part of an international community.

To prepare them to live in an increasingly global society:

• The IB is a rigorous program emphasizing bilingualism and globalism.
• The IB was designed in Geneva for diplomats' and international business executives' children.
• The IB draws from the best of many international educational systems. In ISB's multicultural environment, students study in a world community every day.

To make them smarter. Decades of studies show:

• Bilingual education not only teaches another language but improves cognitive, linguistic, creative, and other abilities in a developing child's brain.
• Bilingual children tend to do better academically.

To give them the opportunity to participate in a competitive academic program that will enable them to stand out when applying to college. The IB is:

• Recognized at top colleges and universities both in the US and around the world.
• The international equivalent of the AP (Advanced Placement)

To help prepare them for the demands of college.

• Students can often earn college credit if their scores are high enough.
• Our IB program is an accredited curriculum with advanced classes in English, French, History, Biology, Mathematics, and Spanish.

• Developing personal qualities of tolerance, respect, caring, self-improvement, self-fulfillment, and sense of humanity all go hand-in-hand with bilingual, bicultural aims so that students leave ISB well-equipped to play their part in making the world a better place.
  

Your support, motivation, and encouragement are absolutely essential to a child embarking on a bilingual education. It is not, however, necessary for parents to speak or understand French themselves.

But there are some specific things you can do:

• Arrange playdates with your child's French classmates.
• Rent videos in French from the school's "Videotheque." 
• Subscribe through the school to French children's books and magazines.

Adventurous parents might:

• Enroll in a French class.
• Your child will enjoy "helping" you learn, and s/he will delight in correcting your pronunciation and grammar, excelling in something obviously challenging for an adult.
• Or get involved with the school community, most of which speaks English.
• Volunteer for Parents' Association sponsored events and activities.
• The more involved you are at your child's school, the more your child will see your commitment to his education and to the school community as a whole.

All children need motivation to learn any language, even their first. If you can find ways to motivate your child to communicate (both speaking and understanding) in French, s/he will do the rest for him/herself.

Most of all, be proud of their accomplishments.

But please, if they do not want to speak French for Aunt Abigail or Uncle Ulrich, don't force them to perform. Pressure, criticism, or even teasing can associate negative feelings with the second language and ultimately make them feel embarrassed by their unique accomplishment.

Many students enter ISB's Maternelle (Pre-school through K) with no French whatsoever, and yet are bilingual within a few years. Also our International Program beginning in 9th grade allows students with little or no French to enter the school.

Pre-K-2nd grade:

• The French Immersion program (Pre-K-2nd grade) replicates the experience of learning one's first language - at an age when the developing brain is still receptive to language formation.
• English is taught one hour a day in Maternelle and roughly two hours a day in 1st and 2nd grades, and some classes are co-taught in both languages.
• Many students enter ISB's Maternelle (Pre-school through K) with no French whatsoever, and yet are fully bilingual within a few years. However, between 1st and 8th grades ISB generally does not admit non-French speaking students. Each child is an individual learner. With motivation and context, language acquisition is easy and fun.

3rd -5th grades:

• The fully bilingual program begins in 3rd grade.
• Students spend nearly equal time learning in both English and French as they study the language, culture, and literature of both countries.

6th- 8th grades:

• In 6th grade they can add German or Spanish, and in 7th, they can add Latin.
• Students have the option to choose between a fully bilingual or a more French-oriented program.

9th-10th grades:

• Some students already fluent in French continue with the above programs.
• Other students may enter the International Program and follow most courses in English, with specific courses in French geared to their level

11th-12th grades:

• In 11th grade students split into two groups tracking for the IB or the French Baccalaureate. The International Baccalaureate, which emphasizes a second language, gives ISB students a choice of either French, German or Spanish as their second language.
• More than just the ability to speak another language, bilingualism is an understanding of another country's culture, geography, history, customs, and politics. ISB students don't just take another language the way some American students take French or Spanish in school, they learn in another language. They study science in French and in English, they study math in French and in English. They communicate about homework assignments and day-to-day classroom housekeeping in French and in English.

Forty years of extensive evaluations show that going to school in the second language (an implicit language curriculum, where the language is the medium of instruction) is more effective than learning a second language in isolation (an explicit language curriculum, where language itself is the object of instruction).

• Studying in French is better than studying French.
• Language acquisition is concurrent with a child's cognitive and social development.
• Language is a major vehicle for children to parse and interpret their world.
• ISB's French Immersion program replicates the experience of learning a first language at an age still receptive to language formation.

Teaching a second language in isolation dissociates the language from other aspects of child development. Integrating a second language into school instruction in an early age, however, ensures that the second language will be an integral part of the child's social and cognitive development.

Since the mid 1980s the trend in second language education has turned away from explicit language curriculum towards an implicit language curriculum. It is now universally recognized that language is acquired most effectively when learned in the context of meaningful social and educational situations.

• Language is about communication -- building relationships, playing games and telling stories, making new friends and working in groups.
• Classrooms, lunchrooms, and playgrounds are places where children are motivated to communicate and express themselves.
• A child who discovers the world through two languages learns curiosity, expression, and tolerance on many levels.
• A bilingual child is more self-confident.
• A bilingual adult is more prepared to adapt and to lead in an increasingly global society.

An important note for families of all nationalities: experts say that for children to benefit from the investment in bilingual education, the commitment should be no less than 5-7 years. Obviously longer is better, but less than 5-7 years in a bilingual education program, and a child will lose the gains s/he has worked so hard to achieve.

Yes.

Our curriculum is challenging because our students learn the same curriculum both French and American children learn, and they do it in two languages. Consequently:

• School days at ISB are slightly longer than in most American schools.
• The order in which children are presented with some subjects occasionally differs from the order some subjects are presented in American schools. (For example, ISB children are introduced to writing cursive and doing geometry earlier than their American counterparts, but perhaps they learn the order of the planets later.

However, this same variation exists between American private schools themselves.

ISB children see other students assimilate successfully all the time. International Schools by definition have a certain amount of turnover, so not only are students aware of the challenges of a new environment, they are more empathetic to the plight of new students.

Diversity inculcates an open-minded approach to challenges and new situations. ISB students learn to be undaunted by change and to embrace new opportunities.

ISB students have been accepted at many of the area's most prestigious schools including The Winsor School, Buckingham Browne & Nichols, Shady Hill, Belmont Day, Milton Academy, Commonwealth School, The German School, The British School, Dexter School, Belmont Hill, Boston College High, Dana Hall, Roxbury Latin.

Should your family live abroad where there is an International School, your child's education will have a seamless transition, as most International Schools are part of an international network of accredited schools, ensuring consistency and continuity in the curriculum.

And, of course, French families know that a transition back to France is also facilitated by the fact that ISB's French curriculum is consistent with the French Ministry of Education's curriculum for French Schools in France and anywhere in the world.

An important note for families of all nationalities:

For children to benefit from the investment in bilingual education, the commitment should be no less than 5-7 years minimum. Obviously longer is better, but less than 5-7 years in a bilingual education program, and a child will lose the gains s/he has worked so hard to achieve.

No.

At ISB, American students in French immersion attain equal or higher level of academic achievement as American students in a monolingual American program.

In fact, studies have shown that a second language:

• Reinforces linguistic abilities in the child's primary language.
• Improves cognitive ability, creativity, and abstract thinking in children.
  

Students in early immersion bilingual programs do well in both their native language and their second language. At ISB, American students in French immersion still attain equal or higher level of academic achievement as American students in a monolingual American program.

An interdisciplinary curriculum helps students establish links between subjects and between concepts. In addition to creating a rich and rewarding experience, the school strives to instill in its students understanding, respect and tolerance of individual and cultural differences, and a commitment to community, whether in the classroom or the world at large.

At ISB, American students in the French immersion program attain the same or higher level of academic achievement as American students in a monolingual America program.

In the standardized ERB (Educational Record Bureau) tests given to ISB students annually from 3rd grade through 8th grade, ISB results were better than those of the suburban schools, and on a par with or better than other independent schools, depending on the grade level. (ERBs are standardized tests commonly used by independent and suburban schools in the US. The ERB tests verbal reasoning, vocabulary, reading comprehension, writing mechanics, writing concepts and skills, quantitative reasoning, and mathematics.)

"But remember" advises Peggy Kirkpatrick, Director of the American Program at ISB, "bilingualism takes time and in general students tend to do better in say 8th grade than they do in 3rd grade. Often by 8th grade, ISB students are above the other independent schools in just about every category."

Likewise, ISB's scores on the French National Exam (which tests French language and math) which all ISB students take in 3rd grade and again in 6th grade are higher than those of French public school students receiving a monolingual education.

Early immersion students often acquire a functional proficiency in their second language that surpasses the level of proficiency of students involved in any other form of second language instruction.

An interdisciplinary curriculum helps students establish links between subjects and between concepts. In addition to creating a rich and rewarding experience, the school strives to instill in its students understanding, respect and tolerance of individual and cultural differences, and a commitment to community, whether in the classroom or the world at large.

Click here to see the full list of colleges universities that current ISB students will be attending next year