Bruce has been granted a bilingual diploma by the International Baccalaureate school system, and he’s not even done high school!
It’s been a long journey to get to this point. From a caregiver who spoke French to him as an infant, through French immersion preschool and elementary education, and French classes and tutoring through middle school: all that preparation led to him being eligible for this diploma.
At some point in the long process, we realized we had a gem in our local high school. Not only did they have the IB program, they had advanced French classes, allowing Bruce to learn with native speakers. He wrote the AP French test in 9th grade, and was accepted into the accelerated version of IB, completing two more years of intense French literature and language as a sophomore & junior.
In the IB program, students choose 3-4 subjects to delve into, and write exams on the sum of two years’ teaching: these are their high-level classes. The remaining subjects are written as standard-level, one-year exams. But language classes have an additional variant: besides standard level, the high level exams are differentiated by whether it’s the student’s primary or secondary language. Bruce took both English and French as high-level primary languages.
Bruce’s school has been offering the IB program since just before he was born, and started the accelerated option in 2009. This year’s class was the largest yet, 81 students., and 3 of them received bilingual diplomas. Bruce was the only one who heard English at home instead of French. I am amazed at how long we’ve all been working on this, most of all Bruce. Bravo, my boy!