Children at Rayito de Sol celebrate the daycare’s 12th anniversary. (Danya Hernandez/Borderzine.com)

A Rayito de Sol reaching bicultural children

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Rayito de Sol – Radio story

TRANSCRIPT

DANYA HERNANDEZ (Reporter): Living in a border city, such as El Paso, Texas, can make many realize the benefits of cultivating both cultures. Some residents consider themselves not American enough to call themselves Americans and not Mexican enough to call themselves Mexicans. But they want their children to be able to embrace biculturalism and bilingualism, so they search for places where their children can be exposed to it at a young age. [Natural Sounds: Ambience music]

Marianne DiPasqualie, a mother of 3, expressed the importance of having her children immersed in the different cultures surrounding them. She said that being an Anglo family she wants her kids to be acceptant of other cultures and languages.

(Raymundo Aguirre/Borderzine.com)

El Paso school districts have no idea how many new students fled Juárez

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EL PASO — As the drug war rages on in México, the number of students that have enrolled in El Paso schools due to the violence remains unknown and unrecorded by schools. Ysleta and the Socorro Independent School Districts said there is no clear indication that people fleeing México to escape the violence have dramatically affected either district. “I know students are coming in from México, but I cannot say with any certainty and there is not any data that I can look at right now that tells me that we have grown by any significant number and that we can directly attribute that to students coming in from México to flee the violence,” said Hector Giron, director for Bilingual/ESL/LOTE Department for YISD. For students that have already made the transition to U.S. schools, the main challenge for them has been overcoming the language barrier. A junior from Montwood High School in the SISD, who wishes to remain anonymous, said he has been going to school in the U.S. for six years and due to his level of English he felt intimidated when he began school here.

‘Even Start’ brings literacy home

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JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. — Every morning as Mayne Beceria gets ready for school, so does her young daughter Melanie. Too young for kindergarten, the dark-haired, giggly girl goes to a special school — Johnson City Even Start. “Oh, Mommy. Let’s go to my school, Melanie’s school!” Melanie tells her mother.

Lundy Elementary Proudly Speaks Both English and Spanish

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EL PASO, Texas — As El Paso continues to grow in population, so does the dual culture and bilingual language of the region. Because the U.S. is quickly becoming a bilingual country, many El Pasoans now realize the importance of teaching their children both English and Spanish, regardless of their ethnicity. Lundy Elementary School was one of seven new schools that started the implementation of the Dual Language Program this past 2009-2010 scholarly year. Even in that short amount of time, the program has blossomed, attracting parents and their children from both the Spanish dominant and English dominant speaking spectrums.

“In my school, and most of the schools in the El Paso Independent School District (EPISD), we have two different classes, one is English, and the other one is in Spanish,” said Ina Lachmann, principal of Lundy Elementary. “We populate it with half of the children who have a dominant language in Spanish, and the other half who have a dominant language in English.”

By putting both groups of children together, they learn to read, write, and speak 50 percent of the time in both languages through the Dual Language Program.

Bilingual city can be an obstacle to learning English

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EL PASO, Texas — It’s a beautiful thing that a majority of El Paso is bilingual.  I don’t think I have ever been anywhere else in the United States where so many people can speak more than one language. Only a minority of the population is monolingual. For those readers who are bilingual, being bilingual can open a lot of doors in other cities, but you can also be very problematic for a person trying to learn English. I realized this while I was tutoring an adult ESL class.