Building Blocks

A former second grade bilingual teacher in Houston, my passion for Bilingual/Bicultural Education developed when I met my first group of students.  They were a mix of excitement, anxiousness, nervous smiles and giggles, milling around the classroom wondering just how their first day with their new teacher was to unfold.  

Armed with a summer's worth of teacher prep courses through the HISD Alternative Certification Program and a classroom management boot camp provided to me by my best friend, I honestly didn't really know how my first day, let alone the whole year would unfold with them either.

What I quickly discovered as the days marched on, was that there was so much that my budding bilingual students were bringing to the classroom to share with myself and their peers.  Though they initially hesitated a bit when speaking English, they had a foundation of English listening and speaking skills and experiences which they used to engage in conversation and build a stronger skill-set.

This didn't happen magically happen, however.  It took a few weeks for my students to feel completely comfortable with me - to know that they could trust me.  I built a classroom community for us by sharing lots of myself with them through stories I would tell, books I'd bring in, music I'd play - how could I expect them to comfortably share with me and their peers if I didn't model this for them first?  Community building was thus the focus of the first couple of weeks of the school year - with academic instruction happening as a result of our community building efforts.

This community technique was emphasized and taught to me by my best friend and mentor, a graduate of the Bilingual Ed Master's program at the University of Houston and a veteran teacher of five years for HISD.  Through this mentorship I learned how to look for and tap the resources that my students brought to the classroom - their language and culture brokering skills, their experiences as a second-generation Mexican-American in a large, urban US city, their likes, dislikes and hobbies ~ all components that I incorporated into my time with them.

My goal for this blog is to offer fellow primary bilingual education teachers a space where they can share their own tools, techniques and stories so that we can create our own online community of exchange and support on how to best build bilingual/bicultural learners. Bilingual education teachers are tasked with not only creating a content subject curriculum for their students, but an ESL curriculum that ushers them into the dominant culture while preserving their heritage culture.  

Through this online exchange of resources and discussion of bilingual education theories and background (Freire, Cummins, Crawford, Krashen, etc.), I hope this blog will serve not only as a sharing space, but one of professional development as well. 

Additions, comments and questions are encouraged!