Katie Constable found herself lost in translation on her family vacation to Europe. But she had a handy translator.

Needing directions to a castle, Katie brought her 5-year-old son Henry into a market with her to ask for help. "I said, 'I don't speak French, but my son does.' "

Her twins, Henry and Isabel, now 6, have been attending the French Academy of Minnesota since they were 2 1/2 -- the typical age at which French children begin their formal education. And now they are fluent in the language.

Celebrating its 10-year anniversary, the language immersion school began in 1998 with four students. Its director, Véronique Liebmann, initially ran the school out of her basement. The academy has been leasing the top floor of the Eliot Community Center in St. Louis Park for three years. About 100 students, from preschool through fifth grade, are enrolled.

The school is growing, and Liebmann said she would welcome eventually offering kindergarten through grade 12.

From the outside, the French Academy looks like a typical elementary school. Inside, the vibe feels foreign. The curriculum for the school is administered by the French Ministry of Education -- which sells its curriculum to schools around the world -- but it's not the only thing that makes this school different from an American school.

Everything from the teachers to lunch is strictly French.

The academy has seven full-time instructors who are all native French speakers. Liebmann said the students need to learn French with an authentic accent.

Katie Constable said she is taking French lessons and being tutored along the way by her twins, who she says speak with a perfect French accent.

At the academy, as in France, students in pre-elementary classes, known as Ecole Maternelle, don't attend school on Wednesdays. However, many parents work every weekday. So to facilitate American culture, the school offers a Wednesday French Club. Elementary-age students have a five-day-a-week schedule.

During elementary school, native English speakers teach English grammar. But Liebmann said that compared with other language immersion schools, the French Academy requires more content be offered in French, including physical education, art and music, subjects typically taught in English in public school immersion programs.

The French Academy was one of the first French immersion programs in Minnesota, predated only by two programs in Edina and St. Paul. Other French schools in the area include Normandale Elementary French Immersion School in Edina, which began in 1991 and now has 631 students in kindergarten through fifth grade, and a long waiting list, said John Devine, the school's principal. While the language is French, Devine said the aim of language immersion schools is to "provide students with a learning that accesses other parts of the brain."

St. Paul's public L'Etoile du Nord French Immersion School began in 1996 with 14 students and now has 487.

Language immersion programs in Minnesota -- which got their start in 1974 when the state's first Spanish immersion program was launched in Minneapolis schools -- have been springing up in cities across the metro area, but Prof. Tara Fortune, the immersion projects coordinator for the Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition at the University of Minnesota, said it's not a "flash in the pan."

"We're seeing growth nationally," she said.

Rapid growth locally

Locally, language immersion programs are not a new phenomenon but they have been rapidly growing in recent years, Fortune said. There are 49 language immersion programs in the state that teach in Spanish, French, Mandarin and American Indian languages Dakota and Ojibwe. They educate more than 7,000 students.

In the past, parents would lobby for the programs. Now most immersion programs are started by school districts that have witnessed the appeal of language immersion, often when it's been offered by neighboring districts.

Also, open enrollment has allowed parents to move their children out of a school district without a language immersion program and put them into another that has a program, which Fortune said has led to more programs recently.

"[Schools] are all of the sudden finding that they are losing their students to immersion programs in other schools." 

To meet this demand, Fortune said public schools are expanding language immersion programs to retain families and keep the state funding that follows the students.

Fortune said the programs are designed to make American children global citizens, and language immersion programs are "our best vehicle to get kids to the highest level of proficiency."

Joy Petersen is a University of Minnesota journalism student on assignment for the Star Tribune.