After a long break, too long actually, I am back to share with you my reflections on raising the bilingual child. The topic I would like to discuss today has to do with the selection of an educational program for your bilingual child. I am all too aware that Spanish is a minority language in a majority culture, and the likelihood that my child become an at risk bilingual (as in at risk of not becoming bilingual is high) in that in our community Spanish is a very compromised language. Spanish is even more compromised as children come in contact with monolingual English speakers who cannot converse or engage linguistically in Spanish. So what to do about school?
Our area does not offer Saturday Spanish school as larger cities might. Aside from starting one yourself, your other option is to attempt enrollment in an immersion, dual language or bilingual program, and the other is to try to maintain and develop Spanish at home.
What do parents need to know about accessing bilingual education? Language immersion programs are typically for students who do not speak the target immersion language and want to learn it. As a program, often fluent speakers of the language are excluded-not sure why, as the perfect immersion is for these children too. In an immersion program, you can expect total or partial immersion in all subject areas including literacy for substantial years of your child’s elementary experience. This program does integrate and teach English literacy and as a result you can expect a Bilingual and Biliterate child over the long term (7+ years of commitment). A Dual Language or Bilingual Education can be another choice. These programs also have the goals of Bilingualism and Biliteracy; however, in the case of Dual Language, learners have access to authentic modeled use of the target language in their peers, and specific pedagogy is used to maximize the cross cultural and cross linguistic gifts kids bring to their own and others learning. Some Bilingual programs only admit students who are learning English as a Second Language, and so like immersion, students do not have access to proficient peers until the learning experience produces them several years after enrollment in a quality program.

So what are you to do? The what and how is wrapped up with race, identity, language and culture. Here is my story.
As you may remember, my child is a Spanish speaker learning English. At home, my husband who is native from Colombia speaks only Spanish with my child, and I am a native English speaker who speaks only Spanish with my child. Until age 2 and a half, my child was cared for by his abuelita at our home, and so, had a tremendous amount of rich language and cultural experiences. Nightly he was read to with authentic and translated texts, had two way interaction in Spanish with the three of us, as well as with the one way interaction with the TV. By age 3, my son was still not talking by the way, worried I consulted every bilingual speech and language professional I worked with as well as an Early Childhood Educator who herself is raising bilingual child where her husband is the English model and she is the Spanish Model. At age 2.5, abuelita returned “for good” to Colombia and day care started. While we searched and searched for a Spanish Speaker who would actually speak and interact with our son and other children only in Spanish, we never found her, so, my son ended up going to a very caring English only environment.
Believe it or not, beyond his safety and the loving environment, my only concern was weather he would learn too much English, and be viewed as English proficient student learning Spanish. (you might be wondering, is that bad?)
So here is what you need to know as parents of bilingual children. There are bilingual children who are so simultaneously bilingual that it becomes difficult to classify them when it is time for school as either English language learners or not, basically. If your child is screened at enrollment in 5 year older kindergarten, they will fall on one or the other side. In our community, if they fall on the side of being a student who is learning English as a Second Language, their bilingual education options are very wide and they can access several learning environments that develops both of their languages, in fact much more accessible than for students who are Spanish Speaking but English Proficient. If, however, my child enters and is considered a Spanish speaker who is English proficient, he can be denied a bilingual education as it is seen as an optional or luxury service, like immersion education. In our area there are also some Dual Language schools where all types of learners can access a multilingual education, and so whether my child qualified as an English learner or not would not matter so much. You should expect to take a home language survey that asks about your home language use as well as your primary language use, and if entering 5K, your child may be screened with one measure that provides information about English Language Learning attainment. This screener is used with the home language survey to determine if your child is an English Learner but not whether he is a Spanish Speaker-although that screener exists too.
My child was on about 5 waiting lists for 4K this year, and only got into a school that offered English as a Second Language. The goal of that program was for my child to be English proficient, so there was no first language instruction. Not acceptable, I open enrolled him to another district in a Dual Language Program.
In the whole process of finding a school for him, I had several conversations about “what my kid is”, meaning is he EL or not. My home language survey was home language Spanish, primary language Spanish, but I am a fluent English speaker, am fair and have eyes like glass-this is a tough combo. My main motivation is that my child have a meaningful education, that is relevant to his life, his identity and preserving at best but hopefully develops our multinational perspectives linguistically, culturally, politically etc. My child’s ability to access schooling that is multilingual is key to our family.
As a 4K student, he has until the middle of his 5K year to be labeled ELL-Yes, I want this label! This is my child’s ticket to his accessing and exercising his rights has a language learner, and without it, I may find myself raising someone else.

Let me know what you think, your circumstance and questions you may have. See you in November when I will address Multilingual Holidays.