Bilingual Education

Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Daisy Galvis, a Colombian-American actress living in North Hollywood, CA with her husband and two bilingual children.  I’m still reeling. My son was not chosen to attend the Immersion Spanish Program in Glendale. I toured Franklin Elementary school, which has an Immersion Language Program, back in 2010 and 2011 . The sight of kids speaking German, Italian, and Spanish just melted my heart on the spot. I knew this was where my son, Jones, wouldRead More ...

Recently my 13 year old son and I got to try out an online video-conferencing Spanish program called, “Homeschool Spanish Academy” and we’re really excited to share our experience with SpanglishBaby readers. Homeschool Spanish Academy – What is it? Founded in 2010, Homeschool Spanish Academy is an online “Spanish institution that offers interactive immersion lessons with native-speaking Spanish instructors in Central America,” (Guatemala to be exact.) As the name indicates, Homeschool Spanish Academy is aimed at homeschooled children, but IRead More ...

My husband, the only Latino in the group of prospective parents, stood next to the only African-American in the group, a mother. They watched a group of adorable elementary school students sing a song in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. As the lyrics, “we shall overcome” sang through the air, my husband realized that all of the students were either Anglo or Asian. He stayed through the rest of the tour and information session at the amazing schoolRead More ...

Yes, I am so, so, so nervous about this! As you know, we’re in the process of applying to dual language immersion programs in our area and we’ve got our heart set in our girl being accepted into the Spanish dual immersion program at Franklin Magnet School, aka International Foreign Language Academy of Glendale. Today is the day the public lottery is held and we’ll know if our girl’s name gets drawn to be amongst the 24 or so childrenRead More ...

It’s hard to believe that in just seven months my girl will be starting a whole new stage in life: kindergarten. That means that we are now deep in the process of touring dual language immersion programs, applications and crossing fingers to get a spot in one of our top choices. Just three years ago when we launched this blog, I visited what was then Benjamin Franklin Elementary school in the Glendale Unified District in California. We wrote a seriesRead More ...

Embracing your culture can be really good for you – especially if you’re a student. A recent study titled “Culture Predicts Mexican-Americans’ College Self-Efficacy and College Performance” found that Mexican immigrant students who identify and practice speaking their native language have higher grade point averages than those who are put in English-only environments in their schools. The reason? David Aguayo, the doctoral student who conducted the study, found that the stress levels of those students who found themselves in aRead More ...

Editor’s note: During the next few weeks, we’re going to be doing things a bit differently here as Ana and I concentrate in meeting the deadline for the forthcoming SpanglishBaby book. We hope you bear with us. Because we’ve been around for almost three years (wow! when did that happen?), this week we’ll be sharing some classic posts from when it all got started. This post was originally published on January 3, 2011. Last week, Chelsea Kyle shared on our Facebook page an excellentRead More ...

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 ...