For Heidi Nelson, the grammar exercises of language immersion weren’t enough. So the Edina High School (EHS) alum, whose daughter Coco attended Normandale Elementary’s French immersion school, came up with coco cha-cha, a line of apparel and accessories for French and Spanish immersion schools that will debut this fall. (Coco, now 11, is entering sixth grade at South View Middle School.)
Nelson created her own prototype and began collaborating a year ago with local children’s author and illustrator, Nancy Carlson (also an EHS alum). With clothes and accessories, they created characters whose names are phonetic pronunciations of random French words. Instead of the traditional school spirit wear, coco cha-cha aspires to produce “ ‘funtastic’ stuff for the cultural adventurist,” as the company tagline playfully states.
“It was difficult for me as a parent of an immersion school kid to not understand the language,” Nelson confessed. “Hopefully this way we can educate the parents as well. We started with French, because that’s where the inspiration came from, but we’ll definitely do Spanish. And we’re seeing a rise in Chinese immersion programs,” so that apparel could be a later possibility as well.
This October, coco cha-cha will be a featured exhibitor at the 2012 CARLA Immersion Conference in St. Paul.
