Benefits of membership in MAIN
- A school or program membership includes all employees and interested parents.
- Attendance at the annual fall MAIN Event, a day-long professional development offering, is free of charge for any employee who would like to participate. Follow-up events, usually held in later winter or early spring, are also free.
- Member schools may post job openings on the Jobs in Immersion Education page.
- Schools may post open house and kindergarten orientation information, use the online forum to ask questions or share ideas with other programs, and be eligible for access to members-only areas of the MAIN website.
Membership criteria
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Use a language other than English to teach subject matter content;
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Integrate language teaching with content teaching;
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Offer instruction through the immersion language for at least 50% of the school day during the pre-school and elementary years; offer a minimum of two content areas taught through the immersion language in secondary continuation programs;
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Promote additive bi- or multilingualism, i.e., enriched instruction in the immersion language sustained through the elementary years, including maintenance English;
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Are held accountable for evaluating academic achievement in the content areas;
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Employ teachers who are highly proficient in the language(s) of instruction and clearly separate teacher use of one language versus another for sustained periods of time;
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Program models include:
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One-Way Second/Foreign Language Immersion
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Co-Official/Regional Language Immersion
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Two-Way Bilingual Immersion
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One-Way Developmental Bilingual Education
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Indigenous Language Immersion
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