A Providence elementary school principal is reaching for another star. It’s within her grasp.

As far back as grade school, Jennifer Walker was sure she’d become a teacher. Then, her experiences at Providence’s Classical High School super-charged her ambition with a passion to become a two-way bilingual teacher.

Many of her Classical classmates spoke Spanish at home but got zero support for their native tongue at school. In 1989, when Walker graduated, educators were nearly frantic to teach immigrant kids strong English to help prepare them for life and careers in America. But young Walker was incensed that the school system stripped her friends of a valuable asset and made them take a “foreign” language to boot. Why not teach a few regular academic classes in Spanish? She would have taken one.

After college, grad school, and a Peace Corps stint in the Dominican Republic that deepened her own Spanish, Walker returned home to take a job in Providence. Fast forward: She is now the principal of Leviton Elementary Dual Language School, a K-5 two-way, Spanish/English bilingual school in the heart of South Providence. It’s the only school in the capital city where every classroom is dual language.

Journalist researcher Chad Aldeman called out Leviton as a “Bright Spot” in his search for schools that helped kids “beat the odds” in student reading performance. Publishing his results in The 74, he scoured the nation’s achievement and demographic data looking for such schools in all 50 states. When I piled on more local data to verify his results, Leviton jumped out of the pack with its two-way bilingual strategy. 

Bilingual education uses the same curriculum to teach all subjects but switches from one language to the other — say, Spanish in the morning; English in the afternoon, and then flipping the order of languages each week. 

Each grade level has two classes, half dominant in each language. Two teachers, also dominant in each language, trade classes, seamlessly continuing the curriculum’s instruction. Teachers pair each kid with a classmate at a similar academic level, but rooted in the different languages, providing academic buddies who can support each other throughout the day. 

Research shows bilingual education generally produces moderate to major academic gains, but also bestows significant other brain-related benefits. Socially, students cultivate genuine empathy and curiosity for each other’s culture. It’s a win/win strategy that should be made far more available.

Leviton has a second big asset: the consistency of its leadership. 

In 2011, Walker was teaching first grade in a small bilingual program within a larger school that was moved to the Leviton building for a whole-school approach. The new principal was Javier Montañez.

Montañez grew up in Puerto Rico, then immigrated here. After a hard-knock youth, he got his G.E.D. and worked hard to pursue a career in education. While at Leviton, he was appointed to be the superintendent of the Providence Schools. 

“Both students and staff adore him,” Walker said of Montañez. She said she most admired “his unwavering commitment to putting students first in all of his thoughts, actions, decisions, and policies.”

Montañez calls Walker “one of the pioneers of the dual language program” who “always went above and beyond to support the work we were doing.”

During his watch, Leviton’s school rating rose from a one- to three-star school in Rhode Island’s one-to-five-star system. Impressively, Leviton’s absenteeism rate (12.4%) is far lower than the state’s (19.7%) and Providence’s (25.3%) 

Montañez launched a terrific school that Walker has since maintained and enhanced.

Still, other schools have excellent academic strategies and consistent leadership, so what else might be the secret sauce in Leviton’s success?

“My staff,” Walker answered immediately. 

Yes, of course, I replied. Every principal first mentions the staff when asked. 

She pushed back firmly: “No, it’s the staff.”

Only 5.1% of the state’s educators are Hispanic, according to the Department of Education’s report cards. The Providence district has 16.2%. Walker did a quick count of her current staff and concluded 70% of Leviton’s educators are Hispanic. 

And many of her teachers grew up in South Providence or neighborhoods like it. Most came up through the city’s school system. Those backgrounds do make the staff an unusual asset.

“The teachers here know that education brought them out of that low-income world,” she said. “They know what the kids are up against. They’re committed to the kids because they were once them. Our community is special.”

Historically, Leviton’s classes have never been strictly 50/50, with half of each class dominant in one or the other language. Leviton has a lot of what Walker calls “newbies,” recent arrivals. Many other kids speak Spanish at home and in their communities, but grew up here, adequately steeped in English to qualify as “English-dominant” by the district’s Registration Center.

At last, this year’s incoming kindergarten is for-real 50/50. White families have been moving into the neighborhood because they like its diversity, because rents are cheaper than elsewhere in the city, and because Leviton is an increasingly known, desirable option, a district-based school of choice. The quality of the school is desegregating it naturally.

Mind you, Walker’s commitment notwithstanding, two-way bilingual is not magic. Leviton’s program has challenges. The Providence Public School Department chose to have reading and phonics programs consistent across the district, a smart decision but one that poses problems for two-way. For example, Walker bemoans that the phonics program doesn’t frontload vowel sounds in phonics for each language since they’re different. 

When she retires, Walker said she will go to work on just such curriculum problems. Her dedication to bilingual education will be lifelong.

But for now, she’s going to help Leviton be the first Rhode Island urban school to get that fourth star. If you saw her determination, you’d put money on it. She’s a bright spot all on her own.