For Canyons School District teacher specialist Amy Gutierrez, speaking two languages has never meant choosing between them.

Gutierrez learned Spanish while growing up in a Spanish-speaking household. English came alongside it. Later, when she became a Spanish teacher, she discovered how closely the two languages were connected.

“Whatever I had learned in English easily transferred in literacy to Spanish, to Spanish literacy and vice versa,” Gutierrez said. “I’ve always felt like it’s been something that has really helped me thrive along the way.”

For World Literacy Day, the Connect Canyons podcast team sat down with Gutierrez and another teacher specialist, Lesli Morris, to talk about the building blocks of literacy and how learning more than one language doesn’t require children to divide their capacity for learning. Instead, skills developed in one language can help strengthen learning in another.

Vocabulary, background knowledge, comprehension, and the ability to retell and analyze a story aren’t skills that exist only in English, Morris said. Children can develop those abilities in one language and draw on them as they acquire another.

This means parents whose native language is Spanish or another language shouldn’t feel they have to abandon that language at home in order for their children to learn English. It also illustrates why Canyons District’s Dual-Language Immersion programs can be so beneficial for children of multilingual families.

Gutierrez has experienced the benefits as a learner, a teacher, and a parent.

Her son, who speaks some Spanish, is enrolled in Midvalley Elementary’s Spanish immersion program, and she wondered how learning in two languages might affect his academic progress. The results have been reassuring.

“He has excelled,” she said. “He has been above benchmark in everything, in math and English Language Arts.”

Both Gutierrez and Morris encourage parents to keep talking, telling stories, listening to music, and reading with their children in the language they know.

“Honoring a student’s language is honoring them,” Morris said. “The language that you speak is so integral to your communication, which is so integral to who you are.”

Applications will soon open for Canyons School District’s Dual-Language Immersion programs, which give students the opportunity to become proficient in another language while continuing to master their core academic subjects.

Episode Chapters

5:21 – The Myth Of Single Language Homes

Our experts talk about their own experience and how focusing on a new language at the expense of your native language can actually be detrimental to both languages.

12:11 – Mirrors Windows And Sliding Doors

How seeing our own cultures reflected in stories helps students find a new appreciation for reading and learning, while also learning about the cultures of their peers.

28:52 – Book Picks And Choice For Teens

Finally, our experts provide insight into how to help students make their own reading choices, and share what on their own TBR shelf.