Welcoming Families from Around the World

My student and their family are arriving from Ecuador next week! I have been researching their daily life, so that I am able to integrate some ideas into the classroom that will help her acclimate to our school! Here are my ideas so far:

• I have posted the written Spanish words around the room on common objects, for example along with our doors being labeled with ‘door’, I have now also added ‘la puerta’ labels.
• We have also learned several key phrases in Spanish such as ‘Buenos Dias’ ‘Adios’ ‘Te amo’ ‘Por Favor’ ‘Me llama…’, as well as several others. One of our teachers speaks Spanish and is assisting us in adding phrases throughout the weeks
• We learned traditionally families are released from school and work to eat lunch together. Since this will be an adjustment for her eating with us at school, we will continue to do family style dining and will be sure to make sure she is included and provided additional support until she is comfortable.
• This will be her first time in a large group setting. Where she is from they do not traditionally have group childcare, it is mostly nannies or family taking care of the kiddos, so we will be sure to schedule one on one time with her teachers.
• Since mom only speaks Spanish and dad speaks limited English we have researched the best type of translator to use and talked to both parents and we are very excited to use the google translator app! We also made sure our daily note app we use translates into Spanish as well, so they will be able to read all about her day and what happened in the way they understand. They can also leave us notes in Spanish, which we can see in English, and then they will see our answer back in Spanish!

I hope all our preparations are going to really help her feel comfortable and adjusted in a shorter amount of time! With the language being the hardest part to break through that is where we are really trying to place our focus, so she is able to feel like part of our family. Her parents, as well, we want to feel engaged and show them how much we care about them and their daughter!