Natalie Keefer has been speaking to her son in French since he was born, reading him French bedtime stories and teaching him phrases and words. Today, her son is an elementary student in an immersion program, and Keefer continues to learn the language, mostly on her own, and considers herself an intermediate level French speaker. 

Not a native speaker, Keefer, who has a doctorate in curriculum and instruction, is learning the language alongside her son, and has witnessed the differences in language learning first hand. 

“I’ll pick him up from immersion and he’s been talking in French all day long. I’ll want to talk to him in French, and he’s like, ‘Mom, I’ve been doing this all day long. Can we just talk in English?’”, explains Keefer. “It’s just something that he’s doing, and because I’ve been raising him that way, it’s something that’s really coming natural for him.”

Through her research, she has explored how to make immersion programs and language learning more family friendly. 

“I am aware that there are so many cognitive, social, economic, and otherwise benefits to being bilingual, says Keefer. I think the biggest gift that I can give my child is the gift of being a lifelong language learner. I know that speaking a second language, cognitively, is like a superpower.”

Keefer is just one of many parents who has a child in a French immersion program without being a native speaker themselves. Over the last decade, interest in French immersion programs has grown significantly. Today, there are more than 35 immersion programs and over 5,100 students enrolled . 

In 1969, after the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana (CODOFIL) was formed, Louisiana’s State Department of Education authorized French to be taught as a second language in public schools. This program has been protected by a mandate from the State’s Board of Elementary and Secondary Education since 1983.

With a lack of home transmission of the language, the average age of French speakers trends younger. The language is mainly passed down to younger generations through immersion programs, often through schools for children and adults. Most French language learners in Louisiana are under the age of 40 and  who have learned the language in schools after the establishment of CODOFIL. 

Alexandra Dufour currently teaches at a French immersion elementary school in Acadiana and went to a French immersion school until college. Dufour says that when she was a student, there were not as many children in her immersion classes as she sees today. 

Like many of her students, her parents did not speak French. Similar to her own experience, many parents she talks to worry about the challenges their students face when they speak French at school and only English at home.

“The only background and the only exposure that [students] are getting is when they’re at school, Dufour says. On the weekends, during breaks, parents can only do so much because they can translate, they can look at the homework, they can help as much as they can, but they need that verbal pronunciation and help to get fully immersed.”

Despite obstacles and worries, Dufour points out that her own experience in French immersion programs and at home, helps her to communicate with parents and inspire confidence in them. 

“I tell them that, because I was in French immersion, I was able to have so many more opportunities when it came to school, explains Dufour. When I got into high school, I was able to not only be fluent, but I had scholarship opportunities. I was able to get higher test scores. I was able to study abroad.”

“Getting all these other opportunities just because you were in an immersion program is what a lot of people don’t see.” To Dufour, immersion programs open up new doors for students and their families, even if there is a language barrier between school and their home.