Bilingual education is a process where limited English speakers or non-English speakers are taught in English and in a home language, generally Spanish in the United States, although many other languages such as Vietnamese, Chinese, Korean, French, Arabic, etc., are also utilized. The idea is to help immigrants and others make a smooth transition toward English fluency and comprehension. In transitional bilingual education, students are taught in their own language for a few years then moved into mainstream English-only classes. In multilanguage bilingual education, non-English speakers attend classes with English speakers in order to gain assistance and encouragement from peers.

The challenge with bilingual education is that often your English learners are temporarily pulled from your mainstream English classroom on a daily or weekly basis to attend a primary-language class. Such primary-language instruction is arguably not only beneficial but even requisite for English learners; and yet the academic instruction that your English learners consistently miss can eventually constitute a serious problem.

If you don't want your English learners to suffer needlessly, you should consider developing a tutoring schedule where you can briefly work with your English learners after school to make certain they are not falling hopelessly behind. Also, make sure to provide your school's bilingual instructor with as many classroom assignments as she requests, along with a good supply of supplemental materials, if feasible. Finally, assign extra homework on a regular basis where necessary to make up for any deficit in your English learners' classroom-instruction time.

In the end, you'll find that most kids are incredibly eager to learn new languages. As educational psychologists Mildred R. Donoghue, Ruane B. Hill, Allen E. Koenig, and Henry Clay Lindgren have noted in their book Educational Psychology in the Classroom: Educational Psychology Today: “It is a psychological fact that young children learn new languages easily and idiomatically.” Ideally, you'll be pleased with the remarkable progress of your English learners as they move from limited proficiency to a high degree of English fluency.