Continuing our look at education: Yesterday, Pat Kelly examined at how educators, parents and business people looked at foreign language immersion schools. But what about the student?

n Part Two: how a child - who's spent his first five years hearing and speaking English - adapts to stepping, in effect, across a foreign border.

Juro fidelidad a la bandera de los Estados Unidos de América, y a la república que representa..."

PK: Sound familiar? It's a large group of elementary students in forest Lake, Minnesota...reciting...?

"I pledge allegiance, to the flag..."

Kids at Lakes International Language Academy go kindergarten through sixth grade, speaking mostly Spanish.
Mostly.

(SINGING)

Sometimes, they go to a lesson in Chinese.

Or Yiddish.

(SINGING: "Hava Nagila, Hava Nagila...")

In an immersion school, children are taught solely - for the most part - in one language.

We visited three such schools: German.

Chinese and --as was proposed in the Superior School District - Spanish.

PK: I'd like to hear you speak Spanish.:
Fallon: Yo va en TV..."

PK: "And what does that mean?
Fallon: "I'm going to be on TV today (laughs)."

But we looked closely - there were a number of children who, really, didn't seem to be "getting it."

"We fully expect that they will not speak a word of Spanish when they get here. And their teachers speak 100% Spanish to them in kindergarten and first grade. And the kids, of course, will respond in English, because that's all they know."

Shannon Peterson's Lakes International Language Academy in Forest Lake has over 450 kids in class this year. They'll have over 500 next year.

"By the middle of first grade, we expect them to - we go through this big ceremony where they walk through an arch and on one side of the arch, they can speak Spanish in school, and then they walk through and they're supposed to speak only Spanish at school."

PK: "Gefaellt es Ihnen alle hier zu kommen; hier zu studieren?"
Class: "Jaaaaa..."

At the German Language School, a school psychologist comes into talk to students about feelings, in English, 20 minutes a week.

"But the rest of the day is pretty much going to be in German."

"Some children go through what we call 'the immersion hump' about mid-October, where they're saying, 'why can't I just go to an English school?'"

Betsy Lueth, who is Director of the Yinghua Academy in St- Paul, says it can be as hard on the parents as it is on the students.

"So it is a commitment on the part of the parents. I think they're tired; their brains are working double time. So what we've found is that with just a little extra sleep and making sure they're getting a good meal at night and before they come to school, within two weeks they're back in action, so..."

But again - what about the parents?

Shannon Peterson: "(laughs) That's a good question. We send a letter home every Monday, saying, 'here's what we're doing in class and here's how you can help.'"

They do that, too, at the German Language School in St. Paul.

"The parents, though: they're the ones coming into an uncomfortable situation. Kids are actually quite comfortable after a while. The parents are more anxious than the kids are."

"These kids potentially have to change buses at the middle school to get to school every morning. I can't imagine my 5- and 6-year-old child having to switch buses to go to school every day."

Superior parents did not show enough support last month to their district to proceed with plans for a Spanish immersion school.
But in a shrinking world and a global economy...

"..there's a trend starting here. For example: at the University of Minnesota - here at the Carlson School of Management - it is now required for every undergraduate to have at least one international experience."

Bill Ulland, the C-E-O of Ikonics in Duluth, looks for that experience when he hires.

"Absolutely, come better paying jobs, for us it's better communication and it's very important to have those skills yourself rather than relying on the other party's translator if you're - ya know - ignorant of the language."

"Wenn mann zwei Sprache lernen, heist dass 'bilingual.'
Es ist leichter, vielleicht, fuer dein Leben."

Many of these schools are public schools and get federal and state funding - exactly as their English-only counterparts do.