Winona Area Public Schools
WAPS superintendent Annette Freiheit, left, and Jefferson Elementary principal Maggie Maine, right, pose with Ríos Spanish Immersion Program interns, from left, Maria Gonzalez Rueda (Colombia), Sara Hernández Arias (Spain), Pablo Lorenzo Vaquero (Spain) and Viqui Fornés i March (Spain) at the Ríos intern welcome event on Sunday. Aug. 25.
The interns for the Ríos Spanish Immersion Program at Winona Area Public Schools have arrived.
Maria Gonzalez Rueda (Colombia), Sara Hernández Arias (Spain), Pablo Lorenzo Vaquero (Spain) and Viqui Fornés i March (Spain) will spend the 2019-20 school year teaching alongside immersion teachers in the Ríos program.
The interns were welcomed to Winona with a special gathering organized by the Winona SLIPA organization on Sunday, Aug. 25 at the Hiawatha Valley Marines Shelter in Dacota Street Park.
The Ríos program, formerly known as SLIP, started in the 2014-15 school year with a kindergarten and first-grade class. There are now Spanish immersion classes in kindergarten through sixth grade. A record number of applications (30) were received for the 2019-20 kindergarten class, which forced a lottery to take place for just the second time in the program’s history.
In kindergarten, the students understand the Spanish language and begin to use words. In first and second grade, the students speak, read and write in Spanish. In third through sixth grade, students build both in Spanish and English language development.