![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/Mi-Escuela-Montessori-in-Lakeland.jpg?resize=310%2C310&ssl=1\")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\u201cWe\u2019re in our third year now, and it\u2019s incredible if you think of where we were in year one,\u201d said Kelly De La Cruz.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
De La Cruz is the founder and executive director. She said the idea to open a dual-language school came from her desire to provide her own children with a bilingual Montessori education. With her kids now in high school, she wanted to expand opportunities for other families.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe benefits of being bilingual are more than just being able to talk to other people. It builds more flexible brains, better problem solving all of these external things that you don\u2019t even think about,\u201d De La Cruz said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mi Escueta Montessori is a tuition-free, public charter school for preschool to eighth grade. All subjects are taught in both English and Spanish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jarel Campbell said dual-language education offers his two sons the opportunity to connect to their family heritage.<\/p>\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/Mi-Escuela-Montessori-in-Lakeland-2.jpg?resize=581%2C214&ssl=1\")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n“They just love it and the Spanish that they are learning here, they do utilize more with each other than us, but the program is great,\u201d said Campbell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For others, having their child learn in both English and Spanish allows them to experience another culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe Hispanic culture is so much about family, it\u2019s so much about connection, and I think it\u2019s also the culture that Mrs. Kelly is trying to bring here,\u201d said Tory Bateman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
De La Cruz said being bilingual has been such an advantage to her, and she is thrilled to offer that gift to her students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cTo see our founding kids and how far they\u2019ve come and how much they now value Spanish as not just learning the colors but as a legitimate communication tool in the world, as a valuable culture to be a part of, that\u2019s pretty phenomenal,\u201d De La Cruz said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Opening only three years ago, Mi Escuela Montessori in Lakeland now serves 200 students. \u201cWe\u2019re in our third year now, and it\u2019s incredible if you think of where we were… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36110,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[6050],"class_list":["post-36108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community","tag-lakeland-dual-language-school-makes-bilingual-education-more-accessible"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36108\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}