Squadron Line Puts Global Spin on Read Across America Day

At Squadron Line Elementary School, “Read Across America Day” on March 2nd, coinciding with Dr. Seuss’s 116th birthday, was celebrated in some very special ways, with a host of bilingual guest readers in K-3 classrooms as well as a book drive to support Waterbury Reads, an organization that encourages all community members to read by providing increased access to books. Gently used books for infants to teens were being collected during the week of March 2-6. In addition, recordings of bilingual readings for all students K-6 were made available via a shared Google folder.

Languages represented at Squadron Line include Spanish, Polish, Afrikaans, German, Hindi, Portuguese, and French. And on March 2nd, parents representing each of these languages read a story in their native language and shared the cultural meaning of the text. Explained first grade teacher Kelley Hodgson, “We are celebrating the diverse perspectives of our school community. The hope is that Squadron students will learn more about being a global citizen.”

Hodgson spent a few moments preparing her students for the guest reader visit. "We have many different languages right here at Squadron Line,” she said. “That’s something to celebrate!”

Hodgson told her students that they were very fortunate because their guest reader, Patricia Galafassi, could read in Portuguese and French. She assured them, “It may sound different, and that’s ok! You really have to look at the pictures and pay attention to the expression in her voice.”

Following along with the story read in Portuguese turned out not to be a problem for Hodgson’s students nor the students in Anna Stillman’s second grade and Elizabeth Bagot’s first grade classes, who joined them in the classroom. The book Galafassi brought with her was the already familiar Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr and Eric Carle. Stillman, who is Italian, and Bagot, who has studied Spanish, compared the familiar sounds of many of the words in the book, such as “pesce” for “fish” and “gato” for “cat” across the different languages.

Part of being a global citizen is trying to understand other people and have empathy for them. Bagot shared her experience about growing up in a Polish-speaking household. She said, “Sometimes we did things a little different. So that just means I’m unique! Here at Squadron Line, sometimes families speak different languages and they haven’t learned English yet. It takes time to learn. When new friends move here from other countries you should be as kind as possible. They might be scared and not able to communicate, so you can help by showing them the things in your classroom.”

The students appeared fascinated that Galafassi not only spoke Portuguese fluently but could also speak German and French and even a smattering of Italian. Galifassi described how she and her family spoke one language at home, a different language at school, and yet another one in the streets. In an effort to parse why here in America, one wouldn’t speak English exclusively, a young boy inquired, “Why do you want to speak Portuguese at home?”

Galifassi had one very practical reason. She said, “[Speaking Portuguese] at home is our opportunity to practice the language so that we can speak to the grandparents, who do not understand another language. And it’s good for the brain to use another language!”

As a broader observation, she added, “It only makes us better to see the differences in people.”

As she got up to leave, Galifassi bid the classes goodbye with a thank you in Portuguese for being such attentive listeners. “Obrigada!”