Parents and students from around the world gathered in West Creek Academy’s multipurpose room last week to attend the Saugus Union School District’s first district-wide Multilingual Literacy Night.
In an event only open to members of the school district, children were able to hear bilingual stories, one in English, followed by a translation in their preferred language: Korean, Punjabi, Hindi, Spanish or Armenian.
In each of the classrooms, a staff member of the school would read a sentence or passage in English, directly followed by a parent volunteer reading the same passage in the language.
In addition, families had the chance to learn about different cultures, eat Indian food, such as naan and butter chicken, and partake in the start of a new tradition for the district.
“We really wanted to find different ways to embrace the amazing diversity of our community and our families. We’ve been doing some mini bilingual storytimes at some school sites, and we’ve heard from families that they wanted some more languages represented and they wanted to be a part of this,” said Carin Fractor, director of categorical and special programs for SUSD.
While only a few languages were read aloud during the event, attendees had the chance to showcase customs, traditions or ideas from their cultures.
“It’s a way for our community to come together and share about who they are and be proud of where they came from,” Fractor said. “We did invest in a lot of different bilingual books to offer this opportunity. These are different family members who have offered to read for us.”
With this event being the first district-wide literacy night, there has been an outpouring of support from the parents.
“We had an outpouring of responsive RSVPs and people wanting to be involved. Families came in traditional clothing, they cooked for us, they decorated posters, we have a mom who writes beautiful calligraphy in Korean, so she’s writing children’s names on a bookmark,” Fractor said.
Those who helped bring this idea to fruition include Parent Community Liaisons Adriana Aguirre and Angela Jolley.
“We pretty much service all 15 schools for the district, and we basically go to any community meetings that parents are going to be involved in, and we show them different things as far as how to access the applications that the students use during class, as well as any district events,” Aguirre said.
“As we’ve gone through the schools, we’ve just realized that there was a need for a lot of the families to feel like their culture was represented, and how much happiness it brings them when they share about their family and their history and language,” Jolley said.
According to Jolley, the district has made an effort to encourage its students to be proud about being bilingual.
“The district has been sending a message to our students that being bilingual is really a superpower. We have something called bilingual storytime, where we go to different schools and parents and students can come and listen to the story and do crafts together,” Jolley said. “But that’s at the school level. District wide, we wanted everyone to have the opportunity.”
Parents are not able to keep the books from the event, but according to Aguirre, that is a goal for the near future.
“As of right now, it’s a lending library. If classrooms want to, or teachers and families want to borrow them, they can by checking them out through the district,” Aguirre said. “We want to include everyone and have everyone united, and that they feel that their community is represented. Having multiple languages in the home is a superpower.”
