Do you TRULY BELIEVE in bilingual education?
The first step is to TRULY BELIEVE that bilingual education is the best choice for your child.
Bienvenidos to our blog! My name is Sarah Quezada, I do not hold a Ph.D. on bilingual studies, linguistics nor brain research but I have worked with more than 300 bilingual brains in my carrier. I hope that my experiences in bilingual classrooms will help parents and educators new to the bilingual field relax and understand the process our students and our children go through.
I am a bilingual educator and mother of three sweet (most of the time) bilingual girls. We live immersed in English, we speak Spanish at home, and they will start taking Chinese at school. I am thankful because I have had opportunities to learn from the best, listen to Dr. Thomas and Collier, trained by Kathy Escamilla’s team from Colorado, workshops with Dr. Barbara Flores, participated in GLAD trainings for three consecutive years, observed teachers implementing SIOP, coach by experts like Dr. Monica Lara, and of course several readings that have shaped the bilingual educator I am today.
I truly hope you find our posts informative, easy to read, and applicable to your bilingual life. Choosing a bilingual path for our children is not an easy decision to make, it wasn’t easy for me when I saw my 30 month old struggle to communicate with a girl her age at the super market, so my first advice is TRULY BELIEVE that bilingual education is the best choice for your child. When you truly believe in the advantages of bilingualism then you are willing to let the process follow its course, you are willing to listen, to ask for advice, to stick to your plan, and it will be harder for you to give up.
There are many advantages to bilingualism, you can google them and find many different articles about them but if you don’t truly believe in them, changes are you will give up at the first struggle, because there are struggles. So do your research, ask questions, and visit good bilingual schools to see what the kids are capable of doing (seeing is believing) and decide if you TRULY BELIEVE.
Bienvenidos to our “Diary of a Multilingual Class”…embrace your bilingual journey!
