Next Austin Bilingüe Meeting – Wednesday, April 23

The next meeting of the Austin Bilingüe group has been set for Wednesday, April 23 from 7-9 pm.
SPEAKER: Leticia Smith, Founder of Risas y Sonrisas – a provider of Spanish language teaching tools for kindergarten and elementary school children. In addition to Leticia’s presentation we will be discussing the next steps in the creation [...]

March 26 Meeting Notes

The Austin Bilingue group met on Wed, March 26 to continue discussing the opportunities facing our community in the area of full-immersion bilingual education. The meeting featured a special speaker, Maria Teresa Aldrete, founder of Eduspark. Tere gave us a wonderful overview of the educational tools that her company has developed – in [...]

Si tiene dos lenguas, tiene dos almas

On March 4 I was driving home from work listening to NPR on the radio when I caught an interview with Geraldo Rivera. Geraldo was on the radio promoting his latest book called “His Panic“. A book that talks about the recent “panic” associated with hispanic immigration into the US. In the [...]

Jardín de Niños Interlingua launches in Austin

Recently I learned about Adriana Rodriguez, founder of the Jardín de Niños Interlingua, a Spanish immersion day care in South-West Austin that just opened its doors. Adriana shares the belief that elementary education in Austin should feature bilingual immersion and she is on her way to make that a reality with her day care [...]

Next Austin Bilingüe Meeting – Wednesday, March 26

The next meeting of the Austin Bilingüe group has been set for Wednesday, March 26 from 7-9 pm.
SPEAKER: Maria Teresa Aldrete, Founder of Eduspark – a software company that offers a holistic, bilingual learning system for K-12.
LOCATION: Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce, Board Room. [MAP]
DATE/TIME: Wednesday, March 26, 2008. 7-9 pm.
PLEASE RSVP  by [...]

My visit to the Austin International School

On Friday, February 22nd I visited the Austin International School in order to learn more about their curriculum in the area of bilingual education. The Austin International School, formerly known as the Lycée Français d’Austin has approximately 120 students and goes from pre-K through 5th grade. The school also now positions itself [...]

Clinton and Obama on Bilingual Education

On Feb 21 Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton debated on the campus of The University of Texas at Austin and provided proof that the Austin Bilingue project is not only timely but highly relevant!
The topic of bilingual education came up and both candidates agreed that having multilingual population would be an asset to the nation. [...]

AISD to Restart Bilingual Immersion Program

On January 2, 2008 the Austin Independent School District (AISD) announced that they intended to restart a bilingual immersion program that had been tested in 2003 but was shut down due to budget issues and concerns from some people in the community that kids weren’t performing well in English and that they were at risk [...]

Wed, Feb 27 – 7 pm: First Get Together of the Austin Bilingue Group

The Austin Bilingüe group will get together over coffee for the first time on Wednesday, February 27 at 7:00 pm at The Madeleine in the Arboretum on 183 near the corner with Great Hills Trail. We will be discussing our common interests in bilingual education for our kids and starting the process of building [...]

Risas y Sonrisas – Spanish for Kids in Austin

Yesterday I was referred to a wonderful Spanish instruction program/methodology offered by Risas y Sonrisas of Austin. Leticia Smith of Mexico City is the founder of the company and she is trained in the well known and respected Accelerated Learning teaching methodology. I exchanged emails with Leti and discovered that there are quite [...]