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January 2006Welcoming Hispanic Children and Families to Preschool ProgramsCristina Sanchez-Lopez, Education Consultant

I have some parents in my preschool program who feel that they should be speaking only English at home with their young children to enable their children to learn English more quickly. In some cases, the parents’ English is so poor that I worry that it might interfere with basic family communication in the home. Would it be better for these parents to speak Spanish at home?

You’re absolutely right in suggesting that parents use the language in which they feel the most comfortable when interacting with their children. Sometimes parents feel pressure from the school or community to speak and read with their children in English. If parents are fully proficient in more than one language, there should be nothing to keep them from sharing all their languages with their children. Problems arise when parents are not fully proficient in English and they use a developing form of the language with their children instead of a rich and complete use of their own native language to communicate, discipline, instruct, and read to their children. Children will develop social, conversational English just from being in this country and being exposed to English with friends and in the community. It takes about 6 months to 2 years for that language to develop (Stages of Second-Language Acquisition). What parents can help with is academic language development, which takes about 5 to 9 years to develop. One of the best predictors of academic English development is the level of proficiency in the first language, so parents can help by talking and reading to their children in their first language (“Raising Bilingual Children” by Elizabeth Coelho). There is a great deal of transfer that occurs between the two languages, and parents’ use of the first language can help facilitate that transfer.

What is always most important is that parents, extended family, and children develop solid, trusting, and loving relationships that last throughout their schooling years and beyond; communicating effectively is a critical factor in that process. You are right to see that as an important issue. It is very sad when children become distant from their parents, grandparents, and homes because of loss of their home language. There are many academic, social, emotional, and identity issues and problems that arise when children are cut off from their families linguistically (summary of an article by Lily Wong Fillmore).

When this situation of “choosing a language” is discussed in schools, I often ask myself how it would be to try to raise my own child in a language I did not speak well. How would I help my child have an appreciation of reading and have her see me as a reader? How would I talk about personal and intimate topics with her, especially now that she is an adolescent? How would my husband and I talk about things if we weren’t allowed to use the language we felt most comfortable in? How would my daughter maintain a close relationship with us, with her grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, unless they shared their language? We should never make any recommendation that interferes or disrupts the relationships in a family.

Related information:

• Stages of Second-Language Acquisition
  http://illinoisearlylearning.org/askanexpert/hispanic-ps/sup-languagestages.htm
• “Raising Bilingual Children” by Elizabeth Coelho
  http://www.beyond-words.org/pdf_files/raising_bilingual_children.pdf
• summary of an article by Lily Wong Fillmore
  http://illinoisearlylearning.org/askanexpert/hispanic-ps/sup-wong.htm

I have a 4-year-old boy in my preschool class who is eager to speak English, but whose English-language skills are pretty poor. This boy is very outgoing and is not at all hesitant about approaching others to play. Because it takes this child longer to communicate his ideas in English, I’ve noticed that other children get impatient with him and often exclude him from their activities. How can I help this child’s social experience in my classroom?

A child’s outgoing personality can really help in his social English development. It’s so nice that he is enthusiastic, and we don’t want him to lose this. There are a couple of things that come to mind in this situation. One thing that is important is to build an understanding and empathy in the other children for the process of second-language acquisition (Stages of Second-Language Acquisition). A kindergarten teacher shared something she did for this purpose. She had all her students think about how they would introduce themselves to one another and “tell” about themselves to other children in the class if they couldn’t use any words. They asked if they could draw pictures or act things out, etc., and the teacher said yes, but no speaking. The children partnered up and tried to “tell” about themselves without using words for about 10 minutes. Then as a whole class, they talked about how difficult it was and how they really couldn’t express who they really were because they were so limited. The teacher used this experience to let the children know that the next day a new student was coming to their class who spoke no English and would probably feel all day the way they felt for those 10 minutes. From having had this experience, the children were interested in finding out about the new student’s language (Chinese) and asked if they could learn how to say some of her words while she was learning English. Later, this same teacher had all the children try eating their snack with different utensils (chopsticks, spoons, and forks, etc.). All the students were working on fine motor skills but with culturally different tools. Very neat!

Another important factor is to introduce the child’s native language and culture into the classroom. I will discuss this issue more extensively in the following replies.

Related information:

• Stages of Second-Language Acquisition
  http://illinoisearlylearning.org/askanexpert/hispanic-ps/sup-languagestages.htm

I know that in some families children end up translating for their parents because the children seem to pick up English more quickly than the adults. Should a teacher encourage this behavior, discourage it, or just accept it as the way things are?

It’s so good that you are sensitive to this issue. As educators, we have to be careful not to put children in this situation when dealing with sensitive information such as parent conferences, grades, medical information, special education issues, etc. Schools need to have professional bilingual staff available to translate in these situations. School administrators should have a line item in their budgets for translating written materials as well as for paying professionals to translate in formal conferences. The more sensitive the subject matter, the more expertise is required for translating all the specialized language in a way that both parties (schools and family members) can understand clearly (translator qualifications list).

We should not contribute to the “parentification” of children. They should continue to be children, and parents should continue to be the adults in the relationship. Parents should receive information directly from schools. Having said all that, there is a circumstance when I think it’s fabulous for children to translate. Anytime there are student-centered performances (science night, plays/skits, reading in the first language night, etc.) or student-led conferences during which students are sharing their portfolio of work (dual-language projects, bilingual research, artwork, etc.) with their parents, it would be wonderful if they shared in their first language. It wouldn’t really be translating but rather sharing their school experiences with their parents. This type of school activity motivates both the children and the parents to attend, and there is no danger of misinterpretation of what is being said in the conference since children are talking about the work that is in front of them and they have very likely rehearsed what they would say in class. It’s never too early to have children keep a portfolio of work and learn to self assess and talk about their work!

The other type of more traditional conferences in which educators sit with parents and talk about grades and what a child is doing wrong or right should have a trained interpreter present and never have children translate for those.

Related information:

• Translator qualifications list
  http://illinoisearlylearning.org/askanexpert/hispanic-ps/sup-training.htm

I have heard that it's best for Hispanic families if the children maintain their home language at the same time that they are learning English. But what if a child's parents are not very literate in Spanish? Is there a practical way for teachers who don't speak Spanish to still enable the children to become biliterate?

For some resources on second-language acquisition and the time it takes and so forth, please see the answer to the first questionwide above. As for the issue of parents’ level of literacy and how we as educators can support biliteracy, I am so happy you asked this! In one research project, called the Haringey Shared Reading Project, children went home to read books to their parents. It was phenomenal in that all the children benefited from this project even if their parents had little or no literacy in any of their languages. In addition, we have to be careful in assuming that parents have no literacy. Even if they have limited formal education, many parents are quite literate in their native language and would be delighted to read to their children if they had access to materials to read, or if they were confident that reading in their first language was a good thing. Parents are oftentimes intimidated by the public library, and sometimes when they do go, there are no materials in their languages. If your community is diverse at all, then the books purchased for the public library as well as your school libraries should be representative of your population. The best thing parents can do at home is to talk with their children in their home language about everything they did at school. Children should practice answering in their native language when talking about school things in order to develop that academic native language. Teachers will find that these students retain more information from one day to the next if the children have talked about it at home with their parents.

As far as supporting biliteracy development, I have been working with teachers to share ideas on how to do just this in multilingual settings, even when the teachers themselves do not speak these other languages. One school that has inspired me is the Thornwood Public School located in Mississauga, Ontario. This school has wholeheartedly embraced the children’s languages and cultures into its literacy instruction. They do many multilingual projects with their students, buy dual-language books for their library, do bilingual story time in their library, and many other things. Their online dual-language literacy project, the Dual Language Showcase, shows some of the books that the children have written in the school with help from their families, older students, and from their teachers. You can have parents, students, and teachers read these books as well as possibly become inspired to write their own. Their Web site has a wealth of other wonderful materials.

The other list I have compiled is one with multilingual books online that are free and that teachers, students, and parents can access online (multilingual resource list). If you have many different languages, you can provide books in all the students’ languages, which parents can read at home with their children or that older siblings can read to their younger siblings at home. If you have contact with an older-grade teacher, it might be nice for older students to come and read to your children in their native languages.

Related information:

• Findings of the Haringey Shared Reading Project
  http://illinoisearlylearning.org/askanexpert/hispanic-ps/sup-haringey.htm
• Thornwood Public School
  http://schools.peelschools.org/1363/Pages/default.aspx/index.htm
• Dual Language Showcase
  http://schools.peelschools.org/1363/pages/dual.aspx
• Multilingual Resource List
  http://illinoisearlylearning.org/askanexpert/hispanic-ps/sup-multilingual.htm

Sometimes when I have a conference with Hispanic parents, they nod and agree with whatever I say, but I feel we’re not really communicating. How can I encourage them to express their observations and opinions, even if they disagree with mine?

I think this has everything to do with the environment in the school itself. One of the best ways to connect to parents is to have a trusted and qualified translator available during the conference (see answer to the third questionwide above). We have to remember that parents are also going through second-language acquisition, and they may not understand all that you are saying, but you are the teacher and they are being respectful and are attending the meeting at your request. If they had access to someone who spoke their language, they would be more likely to ask you questionwides about the class, about what the children are studying in class, what you expect of them, how they can help, etc. Sometimes though, given an opportunity to ask you something, parents will want to know how their child is behaving because they may feel this is something that reflects on them directly as parents. Some parents may draw a distinction between home and school and assume you are doing your job and they are expected to do theirs. This is very common in many places in the world. You are the professional who studied education, so therefore you have the expertise to do your job, and they are the parents who are expected to care for, nourish, discipline, nurture, and love their children. This doesn’t mean that those parents do not care about their children’s education, it’s just that in their experience there is a clear distinction between home and school.

Another way to create a connection with parents is by creating a multilingual environment in your classroom and in the school in general (multilingual resource list).

Related information:

• Multilingual Resource List
  http://illinoisearlylearning.org/askanexpert/hispanic-ps/sup-multilingual.htm

Is it a good idea to include references to Hispanic culture, perhaps by including a social studies unit on this topic, or might this strategy cause Hispanic children to feel singled out?

A lovely way to introduce issues of culture into your classroom without running the risk of stereotyping or singling someone out is to get into the habit of looking at issues/topics you teach from a variety of perspectives. For example, whenever you give a math problem that requires manipulatives, “Everyone make 5,” have children share how they “made 5.” You will find that some children counted out 5 bear counters, some wrote the number 5, some drew 5 lines or put 5 unifix cubes together, etc. Whenever you take the time to have children share the way they saw something, you are setting the stage for true multicultural education. The next step is to introduce artifacts from different cultures into your curriculum in a natural way. Throughout the year, you can have families sign up to share a rice dish that children can try during snack time. Ask families to prepare the rice in a way their family is used to eating it (being careful to observe religious and any other dietary restrictions). When you are studying plants in science, children can look at how and where rice is grown all over the world. You may do this with bread also. It would be great for children to see the similarities and differences.

You may also expose students to the art and music of many different parts of the world, not just American or Western European art and music. The best place to find resources for these artifacts and background information is from the children’s families. These Funds of Knowledge (Luis Moll, University of Arizona, Tucson) are invaluable to your classroom experiences. You may ask children to research the role that water had in the community their grandparents lived in when they were kids and have them ask how they got water to their homes. Comparing and contrasting this information might be fascinating in your science or social studies unit. In this way, you are taking a multiperspective approach to the topic and everyone has something to contribute.

You can also introduce key vocabulary words for the unit of study. For example, if you give the children the keywords you will use in the unit on FAMILY and ask them to find out how you say these same six or seven words in their home language (and even have parents write out the words in their home language and how to pronounce them!), they can come back to class and share these different words. Very young children love to listen to and compare different languages. This activity, like others, helps connect the children to their parents, their language, and their culture and also helps inform parents about what you are studying in class for each unit!

When you move into the use of literature, you must be careful about what you choose and make certain that the books do not depict a particular race of people in a stereotypical manner. There are many wonderful multicultural books, and you can read books about many cultures, not just the ones represented in your classroom. A professor once told me that the books in our classrooms should be both “mirrors and windows” for our students. When children encounter books, they should definitely see children in them that look like them, and places and experiences they can recognize, but they should also encounter books that open up entirely new worlds to them as well as introduce them to people from all over the world. When books are not stereotypical and focus on families, then your students will marvel at how much they are similar to children all over the world. This exposure then would be beneficial to both language-minority as well as language-majority students.

Related information:

• Luis Moll, University of Arizona, Tucson
  http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/students/learning/lr1luis.htm

Do you have any suggestions on how I could improve my relationship with Spanish-speaking families? I feel a distance between them because I must communicate through my assistant interpreting for me.

This is a very sensitive issue both for you and for your bilingual paraprofessional. Your colleague wants to make certain that the parents see you as their child’s teacher, but you are absolutely right that the parents might feel a connection to her because of the shared language. That is inevitable. There are things you can do to show the families and their children that you care about them as much as your colleague does, even though you don’t speak their language.

One thing to examine is the status and prestige of the non-English languages and cultures in your classroom and your school and library. You can easily check this in your classroom by counting the number of books and materials that are in the languages of these children. Also, are there nonstereotypical artifacts visible throughout your classroom such as artwork, music, snacks, etc.? Do the children work on creating dual-language projects, concept books, and songs? Do you and your paraprofessional plan together and team-teach? Do you and your students learn words and phrases (greetings, thank you, please, etc.) from all the languages represented in your classroom? One idea that a friend of mine uses is that during registration she added a couple of items to the forms that parents have to fill out. She asked parents to tell her some phrases and words such as the ones I mentioned above. She asked them to help her write out a pronunciation guide so that she and the children can use these in words and phrases throughout the year. Something else that is crucial is that at the beginning of the year you ask the parents their child’s name, how to pronounce it correctly, and then practice the name in front of them until they smile and give you the OK. This starts the year off letting the parents know how much you care for their child and how much you respect them, their language, and their culture, and it puts them at ease when they see you are willing to risk a little when you try out their language. Finally, I would add that your colleague is a great language and cultural broker for you. She is definitely a wonderful resource that should be tapped into daily.

In the past, my experiences with Hispanic families have become somewhat difficult when students with IEPs are not making the progress we had hoped for and we try to problem solve with the family. The culture seems to prevent the family from saying anything to the staff that might be perceived as negative. If we are not on the right track as far as what the family sees as a problem, we don't get honest feedback. Sometimes then overall progress seems to be slowed down or not at all acceptable. How do we get the parents to feel (1) that their feedback is really important; and (2) if they think we are missing the real root of the problem, they can talk to the staff about it?

Example: a student was having big problems hearing even though she was wearing hearing aids. She would withdraw from working with the hearing teacher most of the time. When we got very strict with her, the student would have a major stomach upset and end up in the bathroom most of the assigned time with the hearing teacher. The parents asked us to not push the child. We wanted to work on more communication between home and school and to try to get to the root of the problem and help the child really make progress that it appeared she was capable of making, but they didn't want to talk about it. We all felt we really had failed her. Do you think that this is a cultural-based issue?

First of all, I would make certain that you have created an environment as I have described in the answer to the previous question. The learning environment must be supportive of the children’s native languages and cultures through the materials, resources, music, visuals, school personnel, and the daily instruction, etc. Only in that sort of environment will parents believe that what they say is truly valued and that people really want to hear their perspective. So if this respect for the first language and culture is not clearly evident, then it doesn’t matter what we say. An example to illustrate this happened when I was visiting what was supposed to be a dual-language school in a state out west in the United States. The school was dual language only in name because there was very little evidence of Spanish on the walls, in the library books, in the number of staff that spoke Spanish, etc. The unspoken message was clear: English was the dominant language and was more prestigious. It really didn’t matter what teachers or administrators said about valuing Spanish and bilingualism; the environment pointed to a much different set of values. Parents should be partners in the education and specific therapy that their child is getting, and they should be getting clear instructions on what things to work on at home in their language while you work on other things at school. They should be encouraged to share what sorts of things they see while you share your side. As I mentioned, this will only happen if the environment I described above exists.

As far as cultural influences, it’s possible that parents are respecting the boundary between school and home and letting you do the job they feel you were educated to do. The other thing is that their children are very young, and normally children are not sent off to school at such a young age in many countries. When they hear that your staff is being strict and making their daughter unhappy, this is heartbreaking and they may wonder if it’s worth all the trouble. What is the relationship like between the hearing teacher and the child? And with the parents? Does the hearing teacher speak Spanish, and is she doing the therapy in the child’s home language? How old is the child? Are we making certain that parents are using their home language with the child? These are critical factors to consider in trying to improve the relationship between school and home; they are critical to making the child’s education more effective.

In a recent training on working with families to support literacy-based interactive activities, I learned that in some Latino cultures, the directness of the teacher is very important. In my own personal experience as a director and educator, I have found that it appears that we "USers" tend to be too direct. Can you give us some thoughts on how to encourage parents?

Positive, caring, and nurturing learning environments are a must no matter where in the world we teach. Educators who practice pedagogical caring throughout the grade levels are valued by parents of linguistically and culturally diverse families. Having said that, I must mention that some cultural norms that we take for granted in U.S. culture can seem rude and cold to people from other countries. I will share the following experience as a way to illustrate this point. When I was living in another country, I remember having an appointment with an administrator at the university where I was teaching. I remember I arrived early, and when it was my turn, I spoke directly about my request and had even filled out the forms he would need to fulfill my request ahead of time. I was wearing my American “cultural lenses” and thought I was being respectful of the other person’s time by arriving early, getting to the point right away, and even filling out the necessary paperwork. Some time had passed after my initial meeting, and I began to wonder why my request hadn’t been considered. I thought I had done everything right! After about a month, my colleagues who had more experience living in that culture informed me that the administrator I had spoken with thought I was very pushy and demanding. He mentioned how I had just barged into his office and never even greeted him before I started listing my demands.

Wow! I was completely stunned. From my perspective, I thought I was being respectful, but in this cross-cultural context, I had to learn about that culture’s perspective and look through their “cultural lenses.” I had to learn about their unspoken norms. I didn’t change who I was, but I began to learn to see things from another perspective quite different from my own. I began to ask my colleagues for cultural insights that helped me navigate through my host country’s culture and be more successful.

Teachers in culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms, schools, and communities need to cross cultures everyday. One can’t help but interpret what one sees from our own perspective, but little by little one can gain insights firsthand from families and colleagues that can explain things from other perspectives as well as let us know if we have committed some cultural faux pas.

Parents and children are also crossing cultures everyday between home and school, so anything we can do to let them know about our unspoken cultural norms would be helpful to them in navigating through U.S. society. As long as neither party makes judgments about the other’s approach but rather seeks to share and learn, then it can be a very useful dialogue. When we build open relationships with the families of our students, then it becomes easier to have the conversations about cultural differences and similarities. A major connection to families and parents is to honor their languages. If we respect their languages and use them as an integral part of our classroom instruction and in communications with parents, then we have built a strong bridge between home and school.

About literacy instruction, I’m not certain if you were asking a questionwide about this as well, but I thought I would add that one of the best ways for families of English Language Learners (ELLs) to support their children’s education and accelerate their English literacy development is for them to read and speak with their children in their native language. Spanish especially shares the roots of academic English, so we are in fact building a very strong base for the children’s academic English development when we encourage Spanish language and literacy development. The transfer of skills from Spanish to English happens very quickly, and you will see the benefits of this dual-language development by third to fifth grade.

What is the best age to start child care? Does it make a difference if the child doesn’t talk and can’t express what he wants? If the parents have the option of keeping him at home with persons they trust or taking him to a child care center, which would you recommend, and at what age?

My husband and I decided to keep our daughter at home until she turned 5 and started kindergarten. It was convenient that my husband has his office at home (he’s a graphic designer). I work outside of the home as a teacher. Something that made this decision easier for us was that we already were planning on making sure our daughter wouldn’t lose her Spanish. We wanted to give her a solid foundation in oral language as well as in reading and writing Spanish. My husband always had several projects and activities planned for our daughter during the day; art and music projects, books, drama, some videos, dance, etc. Keeping a creative environment gave rise to some interesting experiences. My husband often took our daughter to the park, to play games, to the store, and sometimes to a restaurant for lunch. All in Spanish!

The child care center near our house didn’t have any programs in Spanish. In any case, we wanted to have our daughter with us, since we were able to make things work out that way. We knew that soon she would be immersed in English, and we were concerned that she might lose her Spanish.

There are advantages and disadvantages to sending your child to child care or leaving him with someone you trust. No one else can fill a parent’s shoes with his or her child. So the things your child learns at the child care center will stay with him for life only if the parents reinforce those activities at home. Whether you decide to send your child to a child care center or preschool in the public schools or in the private sector, you can ask if someone who speaks and reads Spanish can help him. If you decide to keep your child at home with someone you trust, then besides providing art materials, books, music, and projects in Spanish that are intellectually and creatively stimulating for your child, you should make sure that the adult knows how to use them and that they do so according to your instructions as the parent. This will avoid conflicts about how to educate your child. You need to have openness and trust in communicating with this person about what you want for your child. Make a list of goals that you want to reach with your child and work with his caretaker, keeping in mind that you won’t be there during the activities. Doing a quick review of the activity with your child at home will give you an idea of his progress toward the goals you have set. Your child’s caretaker shouldn’t change the plan, skip a goal, ignore materials, or not listen to what you have to say about your child’s care and education. Did you know that just by reading to your child daily in Spanish, you can prepare him to be reading Spanish before he starts kindergarten? It’s important to remember that this is the age when the brain can learn healthy habits. TV isn’t one of those habits, even though various programs might help explain certain things. The fact that young children don’t talk doesn’t mean that they aren’t thinking and taking in information.

If you decide to put your child in a private child care center, you can choose the weekly schedule. For example, you could keep the child at home three days and take him to the child care center two days. This way, he will be exposed to English and to new experiences and at the same time will develop oral language and Spanish reading and writing at home.

Our daughter is 13 now. She reads and speaks Spanish and English and is now studying French. As a result of understanding another language, she has won prizes in her science class as well as in French class.

When working with parents, it has been difficult to encourage interactive play because often play is not perceived as instructive. We work with preschoolers and are trying to support literacy play. Parents tend to feel that explicit instruction, such as recitation, is the way to learn. Any thoughts on how to approach parents in a respectful way but to challenge these conceptions?

Many times, it is most effective to model the activities or approaches you would like for parents to use at home, provide a rationale for why these are good, and explain what the activities do for children. Of course, as school educators, we communicate to parents that they are their children’s first and most important teachers, and we communicate that all the things we are suggesting should be done at home in the language that the parents and other family members feel most comfortable with. Many parents from other countries probably experienced very traditional methodologies when they were in school as did many of us here in the United States. Changing that mindset isn’t easy for many people.

When I speak at parent meetings at schools, I like to share from my perspective as a parent the kinds of things my husband and I did with our daughter as she was growing up--talking, listening, a lot of artwork, imaginary play, using old cardboard boxes to build castles and playhouses. I talk with them about how my daughter liked to play in the sand at the beach, and we used to build large castles and forts with moats around them. I also show some videoclips of when my daughter was 2 and 3 years old. We watch for a couple of minutes, and then they talk about what they saw. They notice that there were a lot of books in her room at a level where she could reach them on her own. They also notice how our daughter would grab a book and sit on our laps and talk with us about the story, turn the pages, and point to things on different pages. They also noticed that there weren’t many clothes in her closet or toys, but there were a lot of things on her walls that seemed to be her projects, drawings, etc.

I bring the discussion to the present and talk about how those early experiences of “playing” built the kind of background experiences that made it easier for my daughter to understand more abstract academic concepts later. Some examples that I have shared have to do with the castles we built together in cardboard and sand when she was 3 years old. This early experience led her to want to look at books about castles when she was a little older, which then led her to have a knowledge base for the 6 th-grade unit on medieval times in Europe. I also have shared with parents how important it is to maintain their children’s Spanish oral language and literacy because it becomes an incredibly strong bridge to academic English development. I remember one day when my daughter came home from school during 5 th grade and told me that she could finally see why we wanted to make sure she understood Spanish. During science class that day, they were going over some vocabulary related to the circulatory system. The teacher asked in English, “This is the pulmonary artery. Does anyone have any idea what this means?” My daughter thought for a minute and then responded, “Does it have anything to do with the lungs?” The teacher and the other students were astonished, “How had she gotten the connection to lungs?” Well, obviously, she had made the connection to the everyday word in Spanish for “lungs”-- “pulmones”--which led her to pulmonary in English. Now our daughter is in 7 th grade and everyday sees how her Spanish language and literacy background have helped her with academic things in English, especially in her studies in science and French!

Finally, I remind parents of their own literacy development when they were young. Most will recall that they were “reading” (decoding, really) by winter break of kindergarten. I remind them of this because there is no reason why their own children couldn’t also have those same abilities by 5 years old in Spanish. I let them know what a boost that would be for their children as they begin elementary school.

Our program (half day) requires 04 certified teachers. Our model utilizes a pre-K program provided in English with a Spanish-speaking paraprofessional to assist individual children. Our family support specialist is bilingual. What topics shall we address in our parent education program specifically to help parents with the many demands of education in the United States? Many of our students were born here, but their parents have moved here from another country. Many of the children speak both English and Spanish.

I would always begin by surveying parents at the beginning of the school year to see what topics they are interested in, and also to find out what days and times are most convenient for them for future meetings. They will let you know if you ask.

When you meet with parents, I would share some information about second-language acquisition so that they know what their child will be going through. I would also share some online resources for them to use to support their children’s schoolwork and literacy in their native languages (see the multilingual resources list for examples of free books in Spanish online as well as other helpful materials). I would give them the forms to sign up to get their library cards and even bring someone in from the public library who could talk with them about all their programs, etc. I would also share information about community resources related to health, legal advice, housing, dental care, vision, etc.

It is also generally helpful to talk with parents about school routines and about those unspoken cultural norms we discussed in an earlier questionwide. This must never be done in a judgmental way but only as a way to share school culture as different from home, community, or societal norms. Introduce parents to the school nurse, social worker, principal, etc., so that they know they are welcome to talk with these individuals any time they have a questionwide or concern. Introduce them to Spanish-speaking personnel, teachers, secretaries, paraprofessionals, etc., so they know there will always be someone to understand their phone calls or conversations in person.

I have heard that many families who have come to the United States from Mexico and Central America might not ask questions of their children's teachers because to do so might be seen as disrespectful. What are some things a teacher or administrator can do in a situation like that to make sure that she or he is tuned in to the parents' concerns?

Please see the answers to previous questions above.

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