ST. LOUIS - St. Louis Language Immersion School (SLLIS), which was recently named the 2024 Best Public Charter Elementary School in Missouri, is celebrating 15 years of providing a very high quality, unique and global educational experience to kids in St. Louis.
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SLLIS was founded in 2009 as the first and only language immersion school in the St. Louis area providing students with a free bilingual, dual-language education in their choice of one of three language programs - French, Spanish or Chinese. As a charter school, students pre-K through eighth grade living within the City of St. Louis can enroll to attend the school. Vince Schoemehl, a SLLIS Founding Board Member who served as the Mayor of St. Louis from 1981-1993, said he became interested in the idea of starting a language immersion school after his own struggles with trying to learn French in college.
“I understood the benefits of learning another language from a business and life perspective but trying to learn French as a college student was a real struggle,” said Schoemehl. “I remember thinking, why don’t we teach this to kids from an early age so learning a foreign language is a natural process. Our goal when we started SLLIS was really to bring a unique educational opportunity to kids in St. Louis that would give them a distinct life advantage. We’ve become an important asset in the city even though there’s a lot of people who still don’t know about us.”
Founding Board Member Ed O’Neal said that after renting space in three previous locations, the school purchased its permanent home in 2019 next to City Park, home of the Major League Soccer team St. Louis City SC. He said the school, which currently has 400 students and is actively enrolling more, is in a prime position for additional growth.
Jose Manuel Castro Chavez, originally from Mexico, is one of the founding teachers at SLLIS and teaches the dual language model to kindergarteners. He said one of the school’s strategic goals is to help students become global citizens.
“Even though I’ve been doing this for 15 years, I still love seeing kindergarteners who came in at the beginning of the year not knowing any Spanish, and by the end of the year, they’re able to speak in that language,” said Castro Chavez. “The best part for me as a teacher is knowing that I’m making a real difference in kids' lives and giving them a skill they are proud of. I think learning another language opens their eyes to all that is possible for them. Some of my students I taught 15 years ago are now in college and that is so rewarding.”
“Over the years there’s been a lot of research in the area of what multilingualism does to your general intelligence,” said O’Neal. “It shows that when kids learn another language from an early age, it essentially strengthens their neurotransmitters and improves their thought capacity. I think SLLIS is at the forefront of how education is changing. We can see the long-term impacts and progress of our students as evidence of that.”
For more information on St. Louis Language Immersion School, go to www.sllis.org.
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