Bilingual Education

I lived in Miami for almost 19 years before moving to Denver five years ago. While I had heard of several bilingual immersion schools in the area, Coral Way K-8 Center was not one of them. I guess some stuff only becomes important once you become a mom. It turns out Coral Way is the oldest bilingual immersion school in the country, or so I was recently told by NPR’s education correspondent Claudio Sanchez, whose report about the school airsRead More ...

Living in Orlando, Florida, provides a multitude of opportunities to speak Spanish. Everywhere I go, I hear Spanish speakers. At the bank, I often notice that not a single person is speaking English when I walk in. Sometimes, I find myself jumping in to translate for monolingual Spanish speakers in the grocery store or at the mall. There is one place in which they are not being accommodated, though: education. Latinos make up 24% of the K-12 population of Florida, yetRead More ...

If you’ve been reading us for a while, you know that every so often I like to rave about my kids’ Spanish-speaking playgroup here in Denver. We’ve been a part of it since it began and although we don’t get to go to the meetups on a regular basis like we did at the beginning, the friendships both my kids and I have made are strong enough to survive our absences. Plus, as is the case of Vanessa, many of theRead More ...

Editor’s note: This is our last post in our Back to {Bilingual} School week. While we tend to talk a lot about younger children, this post is perfect if you have upper elementary or even older bilingual kids. We hope the variety of posts we’ve presented here this week will help make the back to school transition easier regardless of your kids’ schooling situation. Oh, don’t forget to enter the awesome giveaways we’ve put together for you… you still have time. The bus screeched toRead More ...

Editor’s note: We’re dedicating this whole week to Back to {Bilingual} School. We have a variety of posts that we hope will make the transition easier regardless of what your kids’ schooling situation is. We hope you come back all week to read the posts by our amazing guests and to enter the awesome giveaways we’ve put together for you!  Today´s post is must-read advice from a dual language program. Every Fall, monolingual parents ask me how they can support their children inRead More ...

Editor’s note: We’re dedicating this whole week to Back to {Bilingual} School. We have a variety of posts that we hope will make the transition easier regardless of what your kids’ schooling situation is. We hope you come back all week to read the posts by our amazing guests and to enter the awesome giveaways we’ve put together for you! I have always joked that I was born with a book in my hands, but this wasn’t my choice. Someone had toRead More ...

Editor’s note: We’re dedicating this whole week to Back to {Bilingual} School. We have a variety of posts that we hope will make the transition easier regardless of what your kids’ schooling situation is. We hope you come back all week to read the posts by our amazing guests and to enter the awesome giveaways we’ve put together for you! Unlike most parents who feel that the start of school actually means a step back in their children’s ability toRead More ...

There we were, trapped on a rowboat in the middle of a lake in China. The man rowing the tourist boat refused to take us any further without a large bonus payment. Instead of giving in to his demand, my husband and I emphatically motioned for him to return us to shore. As we disembarked, he launched into an angry tirade that didn’t need translation. Just then, a mother and her young daughter strolled by, slowing down to watch theRead More ...