DLS recognizes that today's students will mature into a world that is more diverse and interconnected than at anytime in our history. Students need to acquire high lvel core academic knowledge and skills, critical thinking skills, arts and technology expertise. They also deserve the opportunity to further their mental, emotional and civic development with the additional benefits available through learning more than one language and their associated cultures. By combining those approaches, DLS will produce students who meet and exceed state and DPS standards and the performance of their non-second language peers - a vision that is backed up by numerous studies over the past 30 years in the United States, Canada and Europe.
The DLS vision is also endorsed by research that shows that young children immersed in a second language acquire reading, writing and speaking proficiency as if it were their native tongue. With their brains still developing, younger children are more able to think in the second language rather than just translate it. Moreover, brain development is enhanced because students in an immersion program utilize greater mental capacities when learning subject content in a second language. By joining content learning with language acquisition, students can absorb knowledge and develop their learning with more breadth and depth and in more qualitative ways.
A primary goal of DLS is to create an intentional school culture organized around the four principles of a Professional Learning Community: mission, vision, values and goals and seven core values. (PLC is a widely praised and utilized approach - including in many DPS schools -- to creating a high performing school community based on mutual cooperation and continual learning by all to achieve shared goals; as detailed in the book, "Professional Learning Communities At Work - Best Practices for Enhancing Student Achievement, '' Richard DuFour and Robert Eaker (1998).