CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Books are important when it comes to child development.
An author who is an Islander alum has written a new series stressing the importance of being bilingual. Doctor Rebecca Palacios is an expert in early childhood education and has played a major role in the dual language world.
She is the co-founder of Somos Uno LLC which is an organization that provides a quality early childhood book series. It models the best of early childhood learning, dual language learning, family engagement and quality teacher strategies.
According to the United States Census Bureau, 64% of the population in Corpus Christi is Hispanic.
Palacios said bilingual books are crucial for building a community. With more than three decades of experience in education, including 24 years at Zavala Elementary, Palacios knows it is important to instill four pillars in her writing.
“One of them is the love of learning. The second one is early childhood. The third one is family engagement — as we know, that’s a critical point, especially for the early years to carry on through, and the last one was teacher agency,” she said.
She wants to provide guidance to every parent, even those who have migrated and are not familiar with the public school system.
“This shows them as a family what you do, how and what the school looks like, what those classes are. What is the teacher going to teach them and so there’s content in math, science, social studies, art culture in the books so the parents can see that and break those barriers to be able to be involved not only at school but also, 'I can do this at home,'" she said.
She hopes that this book will help advance some of those strategies in many classrooms to support children who are going to be multicultural.
“Anybody in any part of the world needs to have a second language to be able to communicate and to be able to be beneficial and, in many careers, right now. Doctors, nurses, teachers, everyone needs to be bilingual in the area that we live in," she added.
Palacios has published four books that focus on the life of 3-year-old Ana, who is just starting school and speaks both English and Spanish.
When she finishes that series, she plans to expand into other languages and cultures to create a multi-ethnic series.
Click hereClick here to check out her books.
