For almost 300 Moorhead children, every school day begins with “Buenos Dias.”

They’re the latest group of little ones, from kindergarten through grade 5, who spend five days a week in classrooms where Spanish is spoken from the time they arrive until they pull their boots and parkas on for the trip back home. They learn all the same lessons that are taught in the rest of Moorhead’s elementary schools, with one big adjustment: Every word they and their teachers speak is in Spanish.

“We aren’t teaching them Spanish,” says Ryan LaDage, who’s spent the past four years as principal of Ellen Hopkins School, where the program is headquartered. “We’re teaching them everything that every kindergarten and elementary student learns … but in an environment where speaking and thinking in Spanish, instead of English, is the norm.”

Moorhead’s Spanish immersion program isn’t intended for children who come to school with Spanish as their first language. Rather, its busy classrooms are filled with youngsters who, like their peers in the rest of the schools, have spoken English from the cradle on. “Our program is targeted at students from non-native Spanish language families,” the principal explains. “This is for parents who want their children to have the world of advantages of being truly fluent in a second language.”

Unlike the foreign language classes that typically are offered in high school and college, the bustling classrooms in Hopkins school don’t focus on vocabulary lists and translation. Instead, the 14 teachers at the helm – most of them native Spanish speakers – help children absorb the language that surrounds them. Their classes, though, focus on the typical elementary topics studied by everyone: reading, math, social studies, science. Even the books are just the same – but in Spanish.

Next week, the district is inviting parents of next fall’s kindergarteners to enroll their children for the upcoming school year – the 18th year local families can choose the Spanish immersion experience for their kids. Registration takes place at the Probstfield Center for Education 7 a.m.-6 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 7, and 7 a.m.-3:30 p.m. Feb. 8. A total of 75 spots are available in three kindergarten classrooms, which will be moving back to Hopkins in September after several years at Probstfield.

“Our program is open to anyone,” Ryan, an Illinois native, emphasizes. He spent 13 years as a teacher and administrator in the northwestern Chicago suburbs before two years at Kennedy Elementary in Fargo.

Preference is given, however, to children who have older brothers or sisters already in the program. With family involvement a big contributing factor in its success; siblings who share the experience can be a plus.

The district will have three Spanish immersion classrooms next fall, each with 25 boys and girls. If applications outnumber the positions available, children will go on a waiting list. He adds that, while almost all students come in as kindergarteners, a few may also be admitted as first or even second graders if openings occur by attrition (almost always because of families moving out of the district). Those families are encouraged to make personal appointments with him to learn more.

Youngsters from all corners of Moorhead have “first dibs” on the available spots. Because the state has open enrollment, though, a number of participants come towns within convenient distances, like Dilworth and Sabin. Fargo and West Fargo families can – and do – fill up whatever spots remain. They pay tuition of $6,067 per year, equal to Minnesota per-pupil reimbursement.

Seventeen years ago, when Moorhead launched its innovative program, it was the only school north of the Twin Cities experimenting with the nationwide movement to expand children’s learning opportunities. While Twin Cities area schools had several similar programs, not only in Spanish but Chinese and French, Moorhead was the first to offer the same innovation in outstate Minnesota. Today, others are located in St. Cloud and, new this year, Duluth, where one of Moorhead’s first-grade teachers moved to help get it off the ground.

It started with one kindergarten and one first grade class. As enthusiastic parents have shared their children’s experiences in the Spanish immersion classrooms over the years, enrollment has grown, and additional classes have been added. Ryan notes that Hopkins hosts eleven rooms of Spanish instruction this year – one each in fourth and fifth grades, with a third that combines the two levels; two third-grade classes; and three each for first, second and kindergarten.

“As parental demand has grown, we’ve added spaces,” he says. He attributes that to both the steadily growing reputation and Moorhead’s booming numbers of families with young children. That’s behind another big change coming up next year. As the fifth- and sixth-grade addition opens at Horizon Middle School, fourth- and fifth-graders now attending class at Hopkins will move to the new facility … where, for the first time, a sixth-grade component is also being added in the fall.

How do Spanish immersion classrooms differ from the regular kind? Ryan says that the primary-grade teachers use the same visual cues familiar to all early education – lots of illustrations, repetition, acting out and using hand and arm motions to explain. It’s a natural, organic way to connect with little ones. “It gets a little more challenging in upper elementary, as social studies and science are introduced,” he concedes.

After spending eight hours a day surrounded by Spanish, he – and parents whose children came through the program – report that the children adjust rapidly when they leave the Spanish immersion program. “A trickle of English instruction is added to the Spanish agenda in the upper elementary classes with word work, grammar and reading,” Ryan points out, “and, after all, they live the rest of their lives in English.”

“Our kids do exceptionally well in annual district and state assessments,” he adds – as well as, or better than, their peers who learn exclusively in English. Those results are demonstrated in the district’s annual testing, as well as Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment in reading and mathematics in grades three through five plus science in fifth.

The principal credits the experienced teaching staff for making the program not only successful, but fun. Eight of the 14 teachers are native Spanish speakers: three from Madrid, two from Spanish-speaking homes in Texas, and one each from Venezuela, Argentina and Mexico. A ninth spent nine years in Ecuador before returning to the U.S. The remainder spoke English as their first language, but majored and have extensive experience in Spanish.

Growing up bilingual benefits children in many ways, he says – not only in career opportunities and cultural openness, but in developing true fluency in the Spanish language. “I took language classes the usual way in high school and high school,” he remembers ruefully. “I don’t remember much. I’ve learned more, myself, from being around these children.”