This was more than a decade ago when we were looking into emersion schools for our daughter. We went to several private schools first and all three were emphasizing ipads as their primary tool for teaching language. The public school our daughter was set to attend had an open house promoting its long running emersion programs.

Wow. Our public school had native speakers and no ipads. There was a major focus on true emersion. From minute one, they were spoken to in the native language. The teachers were incredible. In the first six months, my daughter was speaking in full sentences and her teachers were praising her pronunciation of certain words.

The real eye opener came at a local park. My daughter was playing with a boy, speaking to him and his mother. I came over to join the fun and the mother started speaking to me in Spanish. I was like, "Uh, I don't speak Spanish." She looked at me confused and said, "Your daughter, she was speaking fluently to both myself and my son in Spanish."

It was a pretty jaw dropping moment. One, to think we were blessed to have such a great emersion program at our public school and secondly to see my daughter pick up a language so effortlessly. It really reinforced my idea that its all about the quality of education, not necessarily how much you're paying for it.