Leesburg Elementary School – Leesburg, Indiana

Leesburg Elementary Website

Beginning in August 2018, Leesburg launched its two-way Dual Language Immersion program, offering students in Kindergarten and immersive experience in both English and Spanish languages. Students enrolled in DLI spend half of their school day with a Spanish-speaking teacher and the other half with the partner English-speaking teacher. Rather than learn Spanish through Spanish language lessons, the Spanish-speaking teacher develops students’ Spanish literacy through the Kindergarten content. We have modeled our DLI program after the Utah Department of Education’s state-funded program, and we utilize their research-based model, resources, and best practices. In 2021-2022, our 2nd Grade DLI students took their first standardized Spanish proficiency assessment, and, collectively, they outperformed the required benchmarks in listening, speaking, reading, and writing! The school continues to outperform the language proficiency benchmarks

The continued success of Leesburg's DLI program is a result of the ongoing commitment and efforts of WCS’ school board, its administrators, the DLI teachers and support staff, and the students and families.