I started teaching Spanish for Educators (Spanish for Teachers, Spanish for Office Professionals, etc.) simply because of popular request. Later I added on services to help other districts undergo the same transformation as my own district: ensure that translation and interpretation services don’t just sit unused, but are implemented district-wide and without funneling every call and communication through an ELL teacher or Spanish teacher, for example.
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In the beginning of this expansion, I grappled a little bit with it. On the one hand, I would be helping schools come into compliance with the Civil Rights Act, which requires that schools communicate in the language of families, and it requires that certified and trained interpreters not uncertified and untrained staff members serve as interpreters. On the other hand, here I was helping educators learn functional Spanish. Was I creating a situation where a school might over rely on staff members’ practical Spanish skills and not use interpreters? After sitting with that question and examining it for a while, I came to the conclusion that these two services are both part of the solution. Instead of being in conflict with each other, if implemented mindfully, they could both contribute to an environment that honors parents’ civil rights and extends a warm, personal welcome.

Aim, not to replace interpreters by staff learning Spanish, but to bridge the gap until n interpreter is present and strengthen relationships and trust with students and caregivers.

In the year leading up to my overhaul of my schools’ communication equity systems, I interviewed a cross section of staff members by asking them what their biggest challenge was in communicating with multilingual families. One of the comments that stood out to me was, “... it is impromptu parent visits to campus… we are trying to get [an interpreter] on the phone, but on the parent’s end it seems to be taking a long time and they don’t know what we are doing. On our end we don’t know how to communicate that we are helping and there are several steps we have to go through in order to make the call … and it feels high stress and high pressure and we just don’t have a way to communicate effectively in the moment.”

Since then, I’ve heard different versions of a similar predicament from others in other districts:

• I want our office staff to be able to tactfully put families at ease in the moments they need to take to get an interpreter there.
• I was in the parking lot before school opened, and the Martinez family pulled up and started speaking to me. I wasn’t in a position to get an interpreter on the phone,​ and I wished I had the skills to understand them and respond better.
• Sometimes a family will drop off their student late, but don’t know they need to sign them in. I have to be able to catch them quickly before they walk out the door, but I don’t know enough Spanish to do that.
• We use interpreters, but I know the families feel more comfortable going to staff who speak their language when they have a concern or a question. I want to know enough Spanish that families feel more comfortable coming to me when they need something. I could still then get an interpreter to have the conversation, but at least then they would feel more comfortable reaching out to me.

The moment when I noticed this pattern is the moment when the puzzle pieces came together for me. Is learning Spanish a replacement for interpreters? Definitely not. But if two people are up against a language barrier, it is helpful to be able to bridge the gap authentically and in-the-moment. To be 100% reliant on interpretation, in fact, can make it harder to bring humanity and social grace to the space and moments in between.
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While I think staff learning Spanish can open all sorts of doors apart from just this one, this is a nuanced but important purpose, especially for those seeking to make their schools more welcoming and inclusive. Additionally, for staff who love to serve and want to be their authentic selves with families, learning some practical language can feel like getting the key to the invisible door between themselves and families.
In short, learning a language and using it with others connects with people's hearts in a way that interpretation doesn't.

If people are interested in learning practical Spanish, what then? First of all, if they are, that speaks volumes of your staff!

To start thinking about providing this unique opportunity to your staff, you have a few options: a) you can design a course in-house, b) you can hire a local Spanish teacher or professor, or c) you can contract with someone who has been refining their Spanish courses just for busy educators for the past five years, who can come deliver a proven course for you. That’s me! 🙂

I teach 6-week long Spanish for Educators courses focused on role (Spanish for Office Professionals, Spanish for Teachers, for example) or on purpose (welcoming families and building relationships). However, I know from experience as a language learner and teacher, that language classes very rarely are enough to get someone using their new language with real people (which is our goal for educators). People of all ages, but especially adults and especially educators, have all sorts of barriers: fear of making mistakes and appearing unprofessional, fear of initiating an exchange in the language, busy lives that make it hard to practice, chaotic days at work that can overwhelm the best of intentions.

I have built my classes to help participants with these barriers, and I include several supports in my courses that extend beyond class time, such as:

• printed signs that invite students and caregivers to help the person practice their Spanish,
• strategies for contending with a situation when you are “in too deep” and don’t understand the other person,
• daily bite-sized prompts to get participants practicing in a way that is manageable for their work and provides real time feedback as they engage in practice
• a text hotline to ask for help as questions or challenges come up during the week,
• and more.

​If you want to explore the possibility of providing a practical role- or purpose-focused Spanish course, just book a free call to talk about it!

1. ​Schedule a call​
2. Choose your dates and times
3. Celebrate as your school becomes more equitable, welcoming, and inclusive

In my posts Building Empathy to get Follow-Through and Do it Now So They Do It Later, I shared a couple high-impact tips on how to lead effective professional development around language access and communication equity to ensure that staff actually use the language access tools you have available for them.
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But that begs the question: how do you get PD time in front of staff in the first place? And the more schools you are trying to get in front of in your district, the bigger this question feels.
This question of today. 

Your request for professional development time will be much more effective if you bring other voices to the table in addition to just your own. Gather information, experiences, or statements from families, students, and/or staff. Choosing just one group will make a difference, and if you can highlight more than one, all the better.

There is a huge difference between how a person in a gatekeeping position listens to one person wanting PD time for their important agenda (everyone thinks their agenda is important, and everyone believes it deserves time and they are probably right) versus a person who is able to highlight the voices of others and say that this is what parents and students are saying their experience is in our schools or this is what staff are saying would be helpful to them.
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To be able to do this, I recommend you interview your families, students and staff. But today, let’s just focus in on staff.

In January of 2022, I started reaching out to people: principals, office coordinators, teachers, and operational staff to hear what their experience communicating (or not communicating) with multilingual families was like.

I put people on my list whose multilingual communication I was happy with as well as people I was frustrated with. I wanted to get as global a picture of what was happening on the ground with communication as possible.

When I got my time with them, I asked each person just one question, “What is the biggest challenge you experience or observe when it comes to communicating with multilingual families?” Staff shared freely, and even though I didn’t ask for solutions, often times they would go there for me. It is as if they had just been waiting for someone to ask.

Here are some actual quotes I got from staff when I did that:

“There isn’t a unified front or seen as a priority at all. Because it’s not seen as a priority, there aren’t systems in place or you have to go back and request the basics. They often say they have to come back and ask Anne. You have to take multiple steps just to come up with a flyer– have to check with Anne at every turn. It's like pulling teeth to just do the basics. Voiance and translating texts is very easy. I don’t know what the cause is other than you don’t see it as important. If we are going to be an antiracist organization this needs to be an engrained aspect of our operations. Just like math and reading are engrained in our idea of a school.”

“A [telephonic interpreter] refresher wouldn’t hurt. Also, teachers will often send texts when they aren’t in front of their computer and therefore not accessing Dean’s List. No one reads email or newsletters anymore, but we have all staff huddles that happen every Tuesday … so you could request a huddle to address multilingual family communication.” (Hello! Great solution!)
“Language barrier amongst staff and families is really challenging… Teachers – going the extra mile for a family that doesn’t speak the language – teachers … don’t have the resources or support to deal with it because they are stretched so thin.”

These conversations were incredibly helpful to me. In the first quote, my colleague was frustrated with her colleagues for their lack of independence with multilingual communication and need to check in with me constantly. However, it was a really valuable point of reflection for me: How had I failed to empower staff with the competence and confidence to take action? How had I, in my efforts to accommodate different schools’ different systems, actually failed to take a lead on creating a common system across schools – not as dogmatic control, but to create clarity?

One person suggested refresher trainings during school huddles, which I was able to implement, and which I consider to be one of the most important parts of my system. If I had never asked her for her input, I very likely would not have done that on my own.
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The last one spoke to something I knew to be true as a former content teacher myself: the workload is crushing. I knew that whatever system I developed would need to both make these steps of communication as normal and stress-free as possible, but that it would also help to literally give them time to place actual calls to families.

1. Calendar out a 2-3 week window to conduct mini-interviews with staff.
2. Make a list of at least 10 staff members you will reach out to, asking for just 5-15 minutes of their time. Make sure you ask people in a wide variety of roles and who, based on your knowledge, have a wide range of success and/or experience communicating with multilingual families.
3. Ask them one question only: What is the biggest challenge you experience or observe in communicating with multilingual families?
4. Write down their answers verbatim, thank them for their time and for helping you improve supports and resources
5. Come back to your notes, and start processing them. Some will prompt some soul-searching. Others will inspire clear next steps or ideas for the next year. However, all of them will inform how you design your PD in some way.
6. Finally, start talking to those people who decide and/or influence what the priorities for PD are, and share some of what you learned. This might sound like, “I am hearing from staff that using a telephonic interpreter is intimidating, and a refresher training during the year would be helpful” or “I’m hearing that our teachers are stretched too thin, and I know that if I give them time in PD to place calls, they can start to get some touch points with families and also build confidence in using our tools so it doesn’t seem like such a big deal.”

​Keep in mind that few people are likely to say, “I need a PD session that anchors me in the why and helps me practice the tools I’m expected to use”. You are more likely to hear things like, “Honestly, I haven’t made a call with an interpreter yet. It just feels like I don’t have time”, “I get really nervous about using an interpreter on the phone” or “Well, I haven’t had to use an interpreter because Ms. Maldonado just communicates to the family for me” etc.

However, you can take these comments and extrapolate from them things like:

Staff are telling me they are intimidated by our tools and processes, and I know I can make them more comfortable through training.

We have a lot of staff members who want to communicate with families, but because they don’t get trained, they don’t know how.

Because our staff don’t receive PD on this, they are finding ways to communicate with families via the kids, which is noncompliant with civil rights law and puts an unfair burden on our kids.

I send practical and proven tips on this topic every week. Get these tips 6 months ahead of the blog by subscribing here.

​I take your inbox seriously (because I hate an overloaded inbox myself), so I work very hard to make sure my emails are worth it. 

When I tell people that I teach Spanish for educators, most people think the benefit of the class is learning some basic language skills. Done, and done.  

And that’s how I thought about it in the beginning, too. But after teaching a few different courses, I have started to see that learning Spanish skills is the obvious benefit, but not the only one or even the most important one.

I have come to see that when staff are able to speak Spanish directly with families, they are able to build trust and connection in a way that is hard to do when the only communication they ever have is through a third party interpreter. They also build empathy for all multilingual families as they gain experience in learning a new language. Finally, they become allies in making sure multilingual families have equitable access to programming and services; they join the group that says, “Hey, have we thought about interpreters for this event?” or “Is someone making sure these permission slips are getting translated?”
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But there's one more thing that is powerful about educators learning Spanish. And that is what today’s tip is all about.

Invite parents to speak to you (or if not you, your staff who are learning Spanish) with the use of a visual that can be hung or placed on a desk.

This visual becomes not only an advertisement that Spanish is welcome and included in the space, but that Spanish and Spanish-speakers are an asset to the community. It transforms parents and caregivers from being only receivers of language service into providers of language service in a mutual endeavor.

I have a student in first grade who cannot speak directly with or understand his mom: she speaks Spanish only, and he speaks and understands English only. His sixth grade sister acts as interpreter at home. He recently said to me, "I wish I had an English mom". This breaks my heart! While this is an extreme example, language loss across generations is more common than most realize.

I’ve been researching why fewer and fewer U.S. born Latinos are fluent speakers of Spanish, and why the language is disappearing across generations faster than in other language communities. I had my own speculations as to why that might be, but was interested in what others said about it. While there is no one reason, there is one that stands out to me as something we, as educators, can do something about no matter what state we live in, no matter what the local politics, no matter what kind of bilingual program our school does (or does not) offer.

In a 2022 article in USA Today, Lourdes Torres (a professor of Latin American and Latino Studies at DePaul University) was quoted as saying “Spanish can be exceptionally stigmatized in certain parts of the country, and linked, because of political discourses, to toxic identities, identities that are constructed as criminal… First generation parents, for example, suffer a lot when they get here because they don't speak English or they don't speak English well,” said Torres... “And they don’t want the same thing for their kids. Instead of promoting bilingualism, often, parents— to save their own kids from the agony that they had, the discrimination that they felt because of the language— they push them to just learn English.”

The article continues, “The loss of Spanish is not due to an individual problem of Latinos not wanting to learn or maintain the language but rather the 'really hostile context in the U.S. against other languages, especially Spanish and indigenous languages, languages that aren't considered prestigious, and the people who speak it,’ Torres said.”

That is where educators learning Spanish comes in. Will it change everything? No. No one action ever can.

But might it change something for someone? I think it could.

If I am a parent who immigrated from Honduras, for example, and I find that my child’s school both offers consistent and reliable language access and there are multiple people in the building who are making an effort to learn and speak Spanish with me, might it change how I experience life as a Spanish-speaker in the United States? Probably at school, it will. Will it change how I frame bilingualism to my child? It might.

If I am an educator learning practical Spanish, and not only using it with kids and families, but inviting them to be a part of my language journey, might I play some small part to shift their experience of bilingualism in the school community? I might.

Is that enough of a reason to embark on some language learning that also brings me joy and allows me to have a genuine exchange with a parent, or a newly arrived student? I think for both of us, it is.

In the same USA Today article, Laura Muñoz (asst. Professor of history and ethnic studies at the University of Nebraska) shared, “We assume that this failure to maintain the language has something to do with us – with the way that we were raised, with the inability of our parents to succeed at teaching Spanish – when in fact there are so many other pressures coming at both the parents and the children,” Muñoz said. "When I think about Spanish language loss, the big word is lástima.” (Lástima means "a shame".)

Since the blame does not actually lie with parents, let’s reclaim the power of our role as educators and enormous influences on our children’s destinies by modeling something different than what the broader forces are doing.
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So, while translation and interpretation is critical to respecting the civil rights of families, learning Spanish has a part to play in changing the environment our students and their families find themselves in, in such a way that might support language preservation and a connection to their heritage.

Download this printable for your staff who are learning Spanish. They can print it and fold it on the dotted lines and prop it on their desks where families can see it!

If you have multiple languages, they can display it next to this resource (publicly available on the internet, but I am not sure who originally made it), to notify families of their right to an interpreter and allow them to indicate their preferred language.

If you would like more tips about how to learn Spanish, or help your staff learn Spanish, in order to forge greater connections with Spanish-speaking students and families at your school, sign up for my weekly bite-sized practice Spanish tips. 

If you serve multiple languages, and you know in your gut, that they are not receiving equitable communication from your school or schools, sign up to receive weekly super actionable tips to improve those multilingual communication practices at a system-wide level and to take the burden off the shoulders off the few who are carrying it alone.

When I made the move from Reading Specialist at a dual language school in Austin to Dean of Students in St. Louis, I got some truly fantastic training in coaching teachers and leading PD. The structure our schools used at the time was adopted from Uncommon Schools in New York, and the basic structure is “See it, Name it, Do it”. I am so grateful for that training, because it has proved to be a very effective framework for training adults!

​That last part, “do it,” is probably the most neglected piece in most adult professional development, and that is why I thought it was so important to share this tip with you this week. If you are trying to influence staff behavior and get all staff to use the translation and interpretation resources and protocols you have put in place, doing it must be a part of training.

If you found this helpful, and you would like more support with caring for multilingual families at your school or district, just:

1. ​Schedule a free call.​
2. Tell me about your schools so we can make a plan that works for you.
3. Later, we will celebrate together as your schools become more equitable, welcoming, and inclusive.

Thank you for all you do.