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Bilingual Homeschooling

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This week on Entre Dos, we talk to Catalina Burton, author of the blog Raising Bilingual Children. There, Catalina chronicles her experiences homeschooling her four-year-old daughter, Mia.

In this episode, Catalina talks to us about her family, why she chose to homeschool and what resources she has found helpful in homeschooling her daughter. She also shared advice for parents considering bilingual homeschooling.

Follow Catalina on Instagram @raisingbilingualchildren. Her account is full of ideas and resources even non-homeschoolers will find useful.

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Author Spotlight: Jorge Tetl Argueta and his library of dreams

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We talked to poet and children’s book author, Jorge Tetl Argueta, about why he writes for children and his passion for promoting literacy. Argueta’s poems give us a glimpse of communities that are often misrepresented, erased, and dehumanized in U.S. American literature. His books, which center mostly around his homeland of El Salvador, offer a beautiful counter-narrative meant to build a positive self-image and empathy for our growing immigrant communities.

Jorge Tetl Argueta

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Growing Up Between Two Cultures

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Paula’s cousin, Juliana, talks about her experience growing up between two cultures. Juli, as she’s affectionately known in her family, was born in the U.S. to a Colombian family. She grew up in Katy, Texas, her first language was Spanish and she attended a dual-language elementary school program, but as she grew older, she began to notice many things that come with growing up between two different cultures and the feeling of not completely fitting into one or the other.

Juliana and her familia.

Now, as she readies to head to college, Juli has come to terms with her identity and feels proud of her two cultures. She offered some words of advice for other kids and gave us some insight into what our daughters and other bilingual kids may experience as they grow up.

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

Spanglish

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Decoding the Bilingual Brain: Part I

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What goes on in our brains when we speak more than one language? Dr. Arturo Hernandez, a professor of psychology and Director of the Laboratory for the Neural Bases of Bilingualism at the University of Houston, has spent 15 years investigating bilingual language processing and acquisition.

This week, in the first part of our two-part interview, he discusses how the brain is able to process multiple languages, code-switching and his own experience as a multilingual and a parent of bilingual children.

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El Mundial

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The excitement of the World Cup goes beyond futbol. It’s a time every four years when for 90 minutes a stranger may become your best friend, when families and people from all walks of life gather around the television to watch their country’s team play its heart out, when a goal, a win or a nice play fills you with hope. For people living outside their countries, la Copa is also a way to connect to their homeland, and for their kids, a way to learn about their identity.

In this episode, we briefly talked with Paula and her brother about what the World Cup means to them and how it creates opportunities to connect with other countries and our cultural identity.

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Frambuesa or Raspberry? Expert Anny Castilla-Earls tells us what we can expect from an emergent bilingual mind

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Mami, quiero raspberries. Statements like these may make you worry about your child’s grasp of the language you’re working so hard to teach him or her, but much of what worries us as parents of bilingual children is typical of their development. What is expected bilingual development? And what can we as parents do to help our kids maintain the language?

Anny Castilla-EarlsAnny Castilla-Earls is an associate professor and researcher at the department of communication disorders and sciences at the University of Houston. Her research focuses on language development, assessment, and disorders in monolingual and bilingual children. She’s also mom to six-year-old bilingual twins and a passionate advocate for bilingualism.

Aside from telling us about her bilingual family, Anny shared her expertise on raising bilingual children.

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