2026 Hall of Fame Nominee
Hawthorne Elementary
Louisville, KY
Developing language and cultural competencies has been essential to my personal and professional growth. My journey in creating these began with the realization that language is a gateway to understanding the world. Growing up as a first-generation American in a rural community, I was embarrassed to be different. I will never forget speaking Spanish at church to my mom when my peer asked her parents why I couldn’t “speak American.” Bilingualism isn’t something to be ashamed of but a superpower. My father is a retired decorated firefighter, paramedic, and the most intelligent person I know, yet he still struggles to conjugate English words. Our accents don’t reflect our intelligence or determine our worth.
Cultural competence involves more than language. It requires an awareness and appreciation of culture. While my students and families need Spanish/English acquisition, I value the variety of languages and cultures in our communities. There are many misconceptions about linguistic transfer, and I am passionate about ensuring language competency is understood throughout our profession. Multilingual learners have many strengths and advantages when learning a second language, and I tirelessly advocate for this understanding. When our District adopted a required English Literacy curriculum, I worked to address the needs of my students by creating thematic Spanish Literacy units and an entire curriculum aligned to the academic standards, allowing for linguistic skills transfer. Our district’s materials and production reproduced this textbook to ensure every third-grade child had access to a genuinely bilingual, high-quality curriculum. Additionally, I worked alongside educators in the dyslexia program LETRS to teach phonics, meaning, and context when reading in multiple languages. I deepened my knowledge of the science of reading to support literacy instruction for students reading two languages simultaneously.
I researched the bilingual reading brain and found that “research has confirmed when we use cross-linguistic transfer, it not only enhances but accelerates reading ability” Guilamo (2022). I am sharing that knowledge with educators in my school and the NBCT community. I have seen translanguaging first-hand in my own experience as a MLL. I was a struggling second-grade reader in intervention in a single-wide trailer outside my elementary school. I remember the sheer joy I felt reading my first book: I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream. I transferred those decoding skills, intercepting my grandma’s notes in Spanish, and couldn’t believe I could finally read and do it in Spanish too. This is the joy and excitement I see daily in my classroom.
The importance of developing language and cultural competencies cannot be overstated. This awareness makes me more open-minded and resilient in facing challenges arising from cultural misunderstandings; just because I am a Latina woman doesn’t mean my experience is the same as all first-generation Americans or minorities. In conclusion, developing language and cultural competencies is a lifelong journey that continually enhances my personal and professional life. These skills have empowered me to engage more meaningfully with the world, and I can’t wait to see what else is to come.