Facebook memories told me this morning that five years ago I took four little emerging bilinguals to DelCarte park for an outdoor story walk. “ Storytime Bilingue featuring Pine and Boof the Lucky Leaf ” happened to be our last Storytime Bilingue , and can you believe tiny Cesar is graduating from 8th grade this year and will be attending high school in the fall?! Time has surely flown by.  In celebration and recognition of Cesar’s accomplishments, I have a Storytime Bilingue throwback that has been in my drafts since May 2021 that I never got around to editing or publishing. With proud pleasure I present to you Storytime Bilingue When Spring Comes by Kevin Henkes. This story was on display on the outdoor story walk sponsored by the Holliston Public Library on the Holliston Rail Trail. You can find the start located near the Cross Street access point, and there is a new story posted there each season.  And here’s a recent photo of our amazing bilingual quartet:

Raising a bilingual family is a joy but a challenge. Eight years into this journey, I can say that Maya and Mateo are both bilingual (they can speak two languages) and biliterate (they can read two languages.) The journey has been both joyous and arduous, but also advantageous, and it is my goal as a language development coach to help other families in their own process of raising emerging bilinguals.  It feels like we have experienced it all, from curious stares, to appreciative comments, to micro-agressions (both kids and adults have told us to "Speak English!") So if it’s so hard, why do we do it? Well, growing is hard and that’s ok . And as a bicultural family, I could not imagine a life for my children in which they would not be able to communicate with both my husband’s family and my family fluently.  Raising bilingual children has so many benefits. It can improve communication and bonds in your immediate family, maintain heritage language, and improve your child’s abi...

 Maya has been waiting a long time for this day to come. Tonight she lost her first tooth! And while this is an epic milestone in a child's life, I had to remind her that she didn't actually loose her first tooth tonight. She lost her first tooth the day after she was born. After being induced at 42 weeks, and having 25 hours of labor end in an emergency c-section, I had many surprises the night Maya was born. My first surprise was that she was a girl, because we had been referring to her as "Panchito" for all of my pregnancy. My second surprise was that my recessive genes had prevailed and she had blond hair and blue eyes. And my third and greatest surprise was when the medical team informed me that she was born with a tooth! Approximately one out of every 2,000 to 3,500 newborns come into the world with at least one tooth, and that was Maya. Teeth that are present at birth are called natal teeth and they are relatively rare. Natal teeth are different from normal tee...

Mateo had a tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy on Wednesday at Boston Children's Hospital in Waltham. We made this decision after much deliberation, but for our poor four-year-old who had never slept through the night due to his enlarged tonsils, we hoped the surgery would greatly improve his quality of life.  While he played with a Mario Donkey Kong toy set, we spoke with multiple staff people about his imminent procedure. As the unofficial representative of our family in these situations, I did most of the talking and consent-form signing, but Francisco was there supporting both Mateo and me.  We discussed the procedure with the preoperative holding nurse and she explained that when it was time for the surgery, Mateo would be wheeled away into the operating room where he would receive anesthesia by mask and then have his IV put in. I thought he might be nervous in the operating room without us, so I asked the nurse if there were any Spanish-speaking members of the surgical team...

My Guatemalan husband and I have two white-passing children, who we are raising to be bilingual and bicultural. We've only spoken to them in Spanish and we have made a concentrated effort to instill within them a sense of pride in their Guatemalan-American heritage.  A few years ago, the kids and I were out driving in the car. I don't remember where we were going, but it was daytime and just the three of us. We were driving down a road we travel often, right down the street from our house. I stopped at an intersection and a big beautiful church with a playground sat on the corner.  Little Maya looked out the window and asked me in Spanish, can we go play at that playground? I told her no we couldn't. She responded, "¿Es porque somos guatemaltecos?" My heart dropped at her words. I quickly reassured her that we weren’t able to play at the playground not because we were Guatemalan, but because we weren’t members of that particular church. But it was a harsh realizat...

Promote academic engagement by supporting emerging bilinguals’ social and emotional development in the classroom while building their language capacity. Participants receive ready-made materials and exemplars of gatherings, physical & mental energizers and a collection of tier 1 strategies to use in their learning environments to promote SEL development.  “ Multilingual Mindfulness, ” is a workshop created for MABE ’s 2023 annual conference, Juntos Podemos #MABE2023 Presenters Simone and Mae have worked together to support emerging bilinguals for the past 12 years in Framingham Public Schools. They started at Fuller Middle School, (Simone in 2002 and Mae in 2011) and moved to Cameron Middle School in 2015 and 2016 to start the ESL program there. They have experience providing ESL instruction for WIDA levels 1-4 and have collaborated on writing curriculum in ELA, ESL, Social Studies and Science. They are passionate about culturally responsive teaching, multicultural education, ...

  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 ...

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 mo...

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 ...

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, ...

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 ...

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 jour...

In my previous post about Massachusetts ballot question 4 ( Should illegal aliens be able to get driver's licenses? ) , I used the term "illegal alien" in the title on purpose, but it broke my heart to do so. In the debates leading up to the election, I heard, saw, and read a lot of arguments regarding the question refer to people as "illegal alien," and I wanted to make my blog title as provocative as possible. Now, I want to clarify a few things.  Let’s start by getting our terminology correct. Aliens are extra-terrestrials from another planet, not people from another country. And “illegal” is not an adjective used to describe a person.  This inaccurately labels the person instead of the actions the person has taken.   The act of breaking the law is illegal, not the person out of compliance. People break the law all the time in this country. Does that mean a teenager who shoplifts from the mall is illegal? No, we still refer to them as a teenager. Does that ...

Ah, Massachusetts, you had a chance to prove that civil rights are human rights… and you did it! Yesterday, Massachusetts voters chose to uphold a new law that would allow driver's licenses for those not living legally in the US. I want to share why this is so important not only at a systematic level, but at a personal level.  This bill eliminates the restriction that says a driver’s license cannot be issued unless a person has lawful presence in the United States. Proponents have been trying to make this bill a law for 20 years, and now it's set to take effect July 2023. But why is this such an important issue? Allowing undocumented immigrants to apply for driver's licenses puts more licensed and insured drivers on our roads. It does not mean more undocumented people will be flooding our state. It means vehicular safety for those of us who are already here. Would you rather be involved in a car accident with a driver who has a driver's license and car insurance, or one...

I had an abortion. But for some reason I didn’t even realize it was an abortion until the recent media frenzy over the possible repeal of Roe v. Wade.  In 2015 I had an ectopic pregnancy that resulted in emergency surgery. It was eight weeks before the doctors diagnosed my pregnancy as ectopic, and because I was so far along, my only option was a  salpingectomy. Ectopic pregnancy is the leading cause of maternal mortality in the first trimester, and pregnancies in the fallopian tubes are never viable, so I really did not have a choice.  The day before my 28th birthday, I lost both the baby and one of my fallopian tubes.   Although it broke my heart to miscarry, I felt grateful for the modern medicine available to me, because had I lived 100 years before or in a developing country with access to only limited healthcare, my situation would have been fatal. That abortion saved my life.  And thence began my journey of infertility.  I had always been pro-ch...