Language and Legacy: Celebrating Dual Immersion at Lakeview Elementary with Principal Jamie Davis-Leite Interview on Capstone Brazil Trip

May 20th, 2024 /
Spencer Tuinei /
Elementary School, Lakeview, News, Schools

At Lakeview Elementary, Principal Jamie Davis-Leite spearheaded the Utah Dual-Immersion Portuguese program, which recently marked a significant milestone: after over a decade of rigorous language and cultural education, the program celebrated its triumph with a capstone trip to Brazil for its first graduating class, including Davis-Leite’s daughter, Isabella.

The return from Brazil marks more than just the end of a trip; it is the maturation of an academic vision with budding, proven success. Graduates like Isabella Leite, Jamie’s daughter, and Maddox Dansie, exemplify the program’s impact, having mastered Portuguese while using their skills to serve and enhance their communities.

These students, who once began as novices in a nascent program, have showcased the tangible benefits of bilingual education under Davis-Leite’s guidance and with the steadfast support of educators like Lily Bueno, bridging cultures, fostering community connections, and preparing for global citizenship.

Read on for the full interview with Principal Jamie Davis-Leite to discover more about the transformative experiences of the Utah Dual-Immersion Portuguese program’s pioneering class. Or, read the summative article here. Find the video at the bottom of the interview, which features highlights and heartfelt moments from their memorable journey to Brazil.

Q: So, start from the beginning. When did you start planning for this trip to Brazil? How does this trip fit into the student’s learning experience?

Jamie: So, basically, we started Portuguese Immersion in 2012, and from the beginning, it was always our idea that there would be a capstone travel experience. We thought about it from the start, but it only seemed real as we got closer. The kids got older, and we were like, “Okay. This is now or never.”

We met with Jarod Sites, the Provo High principal at the time. I talked to him, and he explained that the district doesn’t do international travel. We couldn’t do a formal trip and had to be careful that this was separate from school.

Chris Chilcoat, the current principal at Sunset View Elementary, recommended Education First (E.F.) Tours to me because he had used it when he was a teacher. So, I contacted them and set up a tour, within the parameters Jarod gave me.

It would have been about a year and a half ago, and then we had a meeting for all of the kids. We invited all juniors and seniors to the program. At the time, they were sophomores and juniors. So we asked them to come to a meeting and said, “Okay, we found this trip through E.F. Tours. It’s a nine-day trip to Rio de Janeiro. And, it was, like, $4,300, which is very expensive, but also what we got was reasonable. We’ve got a year and a half to make this money and to make it happen.” And so, we decided to do it over spring break.

The kids have been working hard for the last year and a half. Many of them got part-time jobs to fund it. They did some fundraising for some activities to promote Portuguese immersion and help with our planned activities, but for the most part, they just made the money themselves.

Then, we held meetings periodically to help them plan and tell them what to expect next. They had to get their passports, but they did it.

I had high expectations for this trip, and it surpassed every expectation. It was so awesome.

We had 25 junior and senior students travel. We had four chaperones: me, Provo High Teacher Lily Bueno, Roberta Loftus, our first-grade Portuguese teacher, and McKenna Eatough, our fourth-grade English partner and teacher.

I wanted to take the kids to Brazil. We have heard of many other people going to Portugal, but our program is all based around Brazilian Portuguese. All the teachers are Brazilians. The curriculum comes from Brazil. I feel like when some people take kids to Portugal instead of Brazil, there is a bit of bias to do a European country.

But I’m like, no, we’ve been studying Brazil. Of course, there are lessons about Portugal and other Portuguese-speaking countries in the program, but they were primarily about Brazil and Brazilian culture.

We had a Brazilian Tour Director that ran the whole tour in Portuguese. We always told the kids to speak only Portuguese the whole trip. They did a pretty good job.

We had a student who was flying on a plane for the first time. or one student. For three of them, their first visit to the ocean; for ten of them, their first trip out of the country; for nineteen, their first visit to South America; and for twenty-two, their first time in Brazil.

It was a big deal for them. They were doing something that they’d never done before. We traveled overnight, and we started two days before spring break.

We visited the Christ Redeemer statue called Corcovado. We visited Sugarloaf Mountain, where they go up a gondola. We went to Angra dos Reis, a beach town with 365 little islands. We got to go and swim in the ocean, and the kids wanted to go at the beach, like, every single day. We went to Maracanã, the famous soccer stadium where Pelé won. We went to the famous tiled stairs. We went to tour a samba school and talk to samba dancers. We went on a jeep tour through the Barra da Tijuca forest. We went to Petropolis, a historic place, to get them to see it and go to a waterfall.

One of the kids’ favorite parts was the food. Yeah, every type of Brazilian food we’ve got to try here will be so cool and so much fun. We stayed in a hotel on Copacabana. The kids played soccer on the beach, playing with what’s called a peteca, which is a Brazilian sport.

But here’s the most remarkable part of the trip– it gives me goosebumps. When we started the program in 2012, the movie Rio had just come out. We did a summer camp for the kids based on the film. There was the movie Rio, and we taught them about all the major activities in that area, like samba, and soccer, and about the many cultural sites in Brazil using the film as a reference, and for the party theme.

Fast-forward 12 years, and we have to take them to those places– they even ended the trip with this big samba parade, like at the end of the movie Rio.

It was such a full circle moment to come back to, like, “We told you about this when you were six years old, and now that you’re 17 or 18, we’re taking you there, and you get to see the places for real.” They’ve all put so much time and energy into it it was incredible. They identify with Brazil. It’s like part of who they are, at this point. They care so much about the culture.

Q: Forgive me for asking; I have to ask—what is it like? You pioneered this flagship DLI Portuguese program and have grown not only statewide but eventually took a position as the principal at the school where your daughter started her program. Now she’s graduating, and you and Bueno say goodbye to your first graduating class—your daughter’s class. What’s that like? Are you proud of them?

Jamie: I’m immensely proud of all of them. A lot of these kids have been through challenges in their personal lives. Maddox and Bella had divorces in their families. Many faced major family conflicts.

I’m so proud of Lily Bueno because she’s been there for them since the very beginning. I’ll cry if I think too much about it. Lily was and is an essential part of our lives.

It’s just a dream. I remember my own kids used to say, “I hate Portuguese, or I’m embarrassed by it before they went to school.” And then once they started this program, they’ve got this pride in being different, and multicultural that are, again, not just native or heritage speakers of Portuguese. It’s a total dream.

When we started this program, we did not know if we would make it happen. For example, in 2012, the principal, Dr. Daniels, told us we had to find 50 kids to start the program, or we couldn’t start the program. Lily and I were begging people to go to different events, give people fliers, and basically knock on doors.

During this program, we scraped by with 48 kids, and Daniels was like, “Fine, you did your thing.” But truly, it has been such a labor of love.

Lakeview is a far more multicultural school now. We have more Latino teachers, and I’ve worked to expand that not just in the immersion program but across the school. We’re a multilingual, multicultural school, whether you’re in the immersion program or not. We have so many bilingual kids, and that’s celebrated. Seeing this little thing you’ve seeded and poured your time into expanding and growing is a dream.

We started again with two schools. In the beginning, about 100 kids were learning Portuguese, and now, over 2000 kids in Utah are learning Portuguese. I can see the vast level across the state. Lakeview was the flagship school.

It was our baby—mine and Lily’s baby, for sure. We worked so hard to make it happen. So, I have to look at this and see 29 DLI Portuguese schools statewide.

So I can see it on that significant level—that macro level– but then, on the micro level, I see my kids’ day-to-day life and the change it’s made in their lives.

It’s just created a community that is really unique and special. During the trip, many students talked about how Portuguese can be part of their future. So many have told me, “I’m going to finish my minor as I move to a state university.”

Some want to double major and study Portuguese in another language or a completely different topic. However, as a principal and parent, I get to see the big picture, as well as how it affects students personally every day.

Q: So, what’s the argument for immersion for parents reading out there? Why put your students in a dual-immersion classroom?

Jamie: Take this graduating class of Lakeview students, for example. After starting the program, all seniors are graduating with nine credits of 3000-level bridge course credit at UVU. They only paid $45 for that. So, they will have most of a minor, which costs them $45.

Moreover, they understand Brazilian culture; they were comfortable during their trip in a way you don’t usually get when traveling. They understood another world perspective, which is so important to me. Immersion is understanding other people, cultures, and languages. It makes them more open to the world everywhere, not just to Portuguese-speaking countries, and it gives them a broader vision.

The most important thing to me is that it gives you cognitive flexibility. Many excellent research studies show that multilingual people’s brains work differently.

This cognitive flexibility affects you in every way. You can think and problem-solve in different ways. You look at the world differently because you can see it from more than one perspective, culture, and language.

These students are more than just traditional high school language speakers. They are proficient speakers, and most do not have an accent. Of course, there are varying levels because it depends on the kid’s individual commitment, but we had many kids whose Portuguese blew me away. And for some of them, this trip to Brazil helped inspire them to want to do more and be able to work harder.

Learning one language helps them prepare to learn other languages. Many of these students plan to learn Spanish, or have even started learning, because it’s closely tied to Portuguese.

We also have many of the kids in our program who are actually heritage speakers of Portuguese. So, people might be surprised, but Provo and Utah have a significant Brazilian population.

For many students, learning the language of their parents or grandparents is difficult. They would have lost that language without this program. My kids fall into that category because their dad is Brazilian. Teaching a second language in the United States takes a lot of work. No matter the language, there’s so much interference from English because it is the pervasive status language. So, having the support of an immersion program helps prioritize learning other languages. And it helps kids. My kids went from saying, “Don’t talk to me in Portuguese. I’m embarrassed that you told me Portuguese,” to being so proud of their heritage and knowing they’re special because they speak more than one language.

We have our native Brazilians, but we also have a ton of native Spanish speakers in our program. They’re trilingual. And that blows my mind. That’s so cool. These trilingual students become the stars. We sometimes have a deficit mindset about kids with languages, but not in our case. I love that. I love prioritizing and spotlighting kids who are bilingual and multilingual already.

Last, joining the program is free. Contemporary research shows that kids don’t lose any academic achievement. They perform just as well in other areas. So, you’re adding a language at no cost.