1. My Journey to Becoming Bilingual

When I was a teenager, I traveled to Mexico for a visit and fell in love with the country. I did not speak any Spanish, but I learned to say, "Donde esta?" and "Como se dice?" With this ability to ask where is a place and how to say a word, I began accumulating my Spanish vocabulary.

When I turned 18, I moved to Mexico City to study at an international teachers' college for early education. I learned the Spanish language from anyone who had the time to talk, and I unashamedly repeated the words amid laughter and corrections.

I spent many days on the corner at the juice and licuado stand where the proprietor patiently named all the ingredients for me. I still love guayabas.

I would sit on an overturned bucket at the flower market and practice conversing with the vendors who rejoiced at every new word I learned. They would always give me flowers to put in my hair.

The total acceptance of my mispronunciations and willingness to repeatedly teach me the same new word allowed me to begin speaking a broken Spanish before I could understand conversations. I did not experience shame and have always felt privileged and proud to speak a second language.

I met my husband in Mexico and since he did not speak English, we have always communicated in Spanish. When he returned to my home with me, he did not have the same experience learning English. People ignored him or even rudely reprimanded him because they couldn't understand his pronunciation. Fortunately for him, he had studied English in school and his background in reading and writing helped him become fluent through everyday conversations with friends.

The stark contrast between the acceptance of a second language learner in Mexico and the disdain for a non-English speaker in the USA made me a life-long advocate for immigrants to take pride in their home language. Some adults will never have the facility to acquire the second language at a level they feel safe speaking out loud.

However, young children have the potential to speak many languages if their social emotional wellbeing is given priority and respect is shown for the home language. Today there is still shame attached to speaking a different language for school-age children, so they often abandon their home languages.

I have encouraged parents to maintain their home language by using advanced vocabulary and rich conversations, even when their children respond in English. But not all families are successful. They give up trying to speak exclusively in their native language and begin to communicate by code-switching between English and Spanish.

Now there are new research-based strategies to support home language in the school system and to build English as a second language using maternal language skills as a foundation. Personalized Oral Language Learning strategies are simple to use and provide effective procedures to plan possibilities for learning. The underlying message of these strategies is RESPECT for the families and their home language. I will be sharing more ideas based on the POLL strategies in upcoming blogs. You can read the published article here: https://www.naeyc.org/resources/pubs/tyc/dec2018/supporting-children-superdiverse-settings

The POLL strategies are described in an article written by CAROLA OLIVA-OLSON, LINDA M. ESPINOSA, WHIT HAYSLIP, ELIZABETH S. MAGRUDER and published in Resources / Publications / Teaching Young Children / December/January 2019 / Many Languages, One Classroom: Supporting Children in Superdiverse Settings.