Buenos días estudiantes de sexto grado. Mi nombre es Audelina Barrios, and I am a former student of Fuller Middle School. Soy de Guatemala, y viví mis primeros trece años de mi vida en mi tierra natal, pero desafortunadamente perdí a mis padres cuando tenía 12 años. Mi hermano y yo fuimos huérfanos por un año hasta que tomamos la decisión de empezar nuestro viaje hacia los United States to meet our oldest siblings.  In August of 2014 we finally arrived in the land of our dreams, the United States. During our first 4 months in the US, we lived in New Jersey with my oldest sister, Rosa, and went to a school where ESL didn't even exist. I was paired up with the only Latino in the school y sin saber una palabra en inglés. I felt like an outsider because I had no other friends and like I wasn't even part of the school system.  In January 2015 my older brother Francisco and his wife, Mae, adopted us and we moved to Framingham. My first school in Framingham was Fuller Middle School

Do you struggle to get your toddlers ready and out of the house on time in the morning? The past few morning in the Barrios house have been absolutely terrible. Maya usually wakes up early with me, but I let Mateo sleep until the last possible moment before we need to wake him up to get to school and work on time. This worked for a while, but this week we have left the house in tears.  Since this is the kids' first year apart during the day, they miss each other so much. They want to play with each other in the mornings instead of getting ready, so I tried to think of a way to keep all of us on track.  In order to help build their independence and organizational skills, I came up with a morning schedule for us to follow, with words and images. Then I placed a Maya copy and a Mateo copy in a clear dry-erase pocket and hung it in a central place by the kitchen. Now the kids know exactly what they need to do  in order to get time to play with each other before school each morning. And

Sleep is a very important commodity in our house. My kids are like me and they need their beauty rest, but also just like my husband in that they never just laid down to go to sleep. They needed to be wound down, with a specific bedtime and nap routine or there was no chance.  Very early on in Maya’s life (at two months old) we began a sleeping routine with scheduled naps and a 7pm bedtime. The routine was bath (when applicable), book, nurse, bed. Keeping to schedule was the best way to keep her well-rested and when little brother came along, I put him on the exact same schedule so that they were aligned. This meant that starting when Mateo was two months old they both took an afternoon nap from 1-3pm daily and Mami got some much-needed rest time herself!  There was one element to Maya’s sleep equation that made every nap time and bedtime a success: one specific song. When I was nervously awaiting her arrival in my last month of pregnancy and had difficulty sleeping myself, I started l

Four days remain in 2022 and I have one book left. Then I will have successfully achieved my New Year’s Resolution to read the entire Bible in one year.   While there are many one-year bibles on the market, I chose to read my grandmother’s Women’s Devotional Bible circa 1990. Though it has been well-loved, it’s in exceptional shape for being nearly as old as I am. I know my grandmother read it often, but I don’t think she ever read it cover-to-cover.  Nearly every day this year I sat down and read a few chapters, if not a whole book. Most days it was a joy, some days it felt like a chore. Some days I was too busy or exhausted to read, so I caught up on quieter nights. Most of my reading happened after Maya & Mateo went to bed, since it’s hard to concentrate on such dense reading with two toddlers constantly vying for my attention. Many nights they fell asleep to me reading it aloud to them, and many times I had to try and translate the Word on the fly, as Mateo requested, “Español,

I recently found a tiny pair of jeans and a pink chambray shirt in a random bag of clothes in the basement. They were size 6x and XS, and I recognized them immediately as the clothes Sofia wore when she arrived at our home in February 2018. It was the day after Valentine's Day, and it was an emergency familial foster placement. We thought she would only be there for the weekend, but she ended up being a member of our immediate family for four and a half years. She joined our household when Maya was nine months old, and now Maya is size 6x. So it is fitting and bittersweet that Sofia finally got to go back to her mom this summer.  We welcomed a scrawny, gap-toothed first grader in February 2018, and said goodbye to a beautiful, gangly preteen in July 2022.  Being a foster family is not easy, and being a child in the foster system is even harder. We lived in limbo for four and a half years, waiting with bated breath for each case review and court date. Not being able to receive defin

We never talked about race at the dinner table when I was growing up. I lived in an affluent town in Southern California that was 85% white and 15% Hispanic, and as a little blond-haired blue-eyed girl, I was blissfully unaware that racism was still prevalent in the US.  Until I went to college in Boston. My roommates freshman year--two black young women from New York City--became my best friends, and the first black people I had ever known. As I got to know them deeper and my friendship circles began to expand, my eyes were opened to blatant racism and microaggressions my black and brown friends experienced. I had my first conversations about race when I was 18-years-old, a stark contrast I learned from my new friends’ experiences, in which they were taught early on in childhood to “speak correct English,” always keep their hands visible when shopping, and to be wary of law enforcement. It was heartbreaking to hear their unfair life experiences and it was then that I began my journey