Found in translation

Something a little different for the blogosphere tonight...Algo diferente esta para los que leen este blog. noche

Tonight I had the pleasure of hosting a workshop for parents at our school. The workshop was about asset building, a fancy way of saying, "how to get our kids to build the skills they need to be successful". The information was sent out to parents via our newsletter, which is translated into Spanish. Now, given that about 50% of our students are Hispanic, I should have expected that Spanish speaking parents would show up. Little did I know that only Spanish speaking parents would show up. Needless to say, it was an interesting night.

What I didn't expect, however, was that, what could have been an utter fiasco (with no translator), ended up being a great success. Luckily for me, one parent spoke both Spanish and English and was gracious enough to translate some of the information, and I spoke as much as I could in Spanish. The feedback was great! One parent even asked if they could come every Tuesday night! I am very thankful that I was able to connect with these parents and learn to find some common ground within the Spanglish translation. I look forward to working with these parents more and am hoping that they will share some of the information they learned tonight with more parents and members of our community!