En Espanol, por favor.

The mother of two of my grandchildren is from Mexico.  One of them, Little Suzy, is pictured in my profile picture.  Their mother is adamant that these children grow up to be fully acclimated, English speaking Americans.  She insisted that they have English names, Susan and Andrew.  It isn't that she is ashamed of her Mexican heritage, it is just that she very much wants her children to succeed in this country.  She is in fact, proud of her Mexican heritage, so my son and she are raising the children to be bilingual.  The children are learning to speak Spanish and English with equal fluency.

To that end, my wife and I were overjoyed to find that we could find a Spanish language version of nearly every classic story book that you typically find in English.  Often the books are exactly the same, same cover, same illustrations, the only difference is that the text of one will be in English, the other in Spanish. Every time that we buy a story book for those grandchildren, we buy both the Spanish and the English version. So, for instance we have Goodnight, Bunny and Buenas Noches, Conejito.  We have The Three Little Pigs and The Big, Bad Wolf, and we have Los Tres Cerditos y El Lobo.  We have great fun reading first one version and then the other.  We think it helps the kids learn to speak and to read both languages with equal facility.  I love it when Little Suzy points to a picture and proudly proclaims "Bunny!" and then, a second later, almost whispers "conejito" (self-talking?).  I often wonder what it means that Suzy always selects the English version for us to read to her first.

There are a lot of students in the school system for whom English is their second language. I think that it is important that teachers recognize their cultural and language differences and strive to take that into account in the classroom.  I am not teaching yet, but I would have no problem if a student could find content readings in their native language and use them to help learn the lesson, so long as the student can read and write the answers in English.  I think that my grandchildren are going to be thoroughly bilingual speakers and readers, and I think that is great.  If it helps the student to learn the lesson by using study aides in their native language, I think that teachers should respect that and facilitate it.