We're going to go ahead and get our recording started here.
And I'm really excitedOunce to welcome our presenters.
Tina Bartholoma comes to us from the Salt Lake County library system, and David Bird comes to us from the Salt Lake County Library services.
I have to give a shout out to Thomas Lee from the Utah state library, who recommended these folks as great presenters, bringing great work in the area of bilingual story time, and we're so excited to have you here today.
Welcome, David and Tina.
>> Hi, everybody.
I'm David, and thank you for coming here.
>> And I'm Tina.
>> We are sharing the same speakerphone.
Before we get started I want to invite everybody to go ahead and type in the chat your -- your maybe top one or two barriers you're dealing with when it comes to bilingual story times.
We'll make sure we try to address the main ones that show up.
Go wild, but if you want to -- if you hold off until the end we're going to ask you to also post all of your awesome links, any stuff you've been working on that you'd like other people to share.
We will have those also -- we'll ask you to do that at the end.
Now to introduce ourselves, while you guys are chatting, I'm David Bird, everyone calls me Davy.
I am bilingual, I speak Spanish fluently, I have tried attempted bilingual story times probably maybe eight times in my 12-year career, and failed several times, and then had some successes.
So I'm really excited to talk about both my failures and the successes.
>> And my name is Tina Bartholoma, I've been doing story times for over 10 years, and a couple of years ago I got transferred to a library branch that had a population that was 35% -- 30% Latino.
And I got told we haven't had any Spanish programming for a couple of years, and we want you to do it.
And so I immediately contacted a few of my colleagues, including Davy and said how do I do this?
So day ofy is the expert here, and I'm here as the cheerleader saying if I can do this, so can you.
Don't forget to add your barriers, your top couple barriers to the chat and we'll go ahead and get started right now.
>> I can chime in and let you know, some of what I've been seeing, some great responses, lots of folks pointing out that they're not bilingual themselves, or they don't have Spanish language skills.
Lots of folks mentioning that they don't have Spanish speakers come to their story times, so around getting folks to come, a lack of foreign language materials in their libraries, so lots of similar challenges coming through.
>> Wonderful.
I think those three things that you just mentioned, we are going to address, so we're on the right track.
I'm glad to hear that.
>> You're in the right place.
>> So why bilingual story times?
You'll see a picture on the slides of a bicycle with training wheels.
Bilingual is a great way to start adding additional languages to your programming, even when you don't feel comfortable yet.
It's a great way to do that, it's great for beginners, and you'll see the "why me" on there.
Who else is going to do it?
If you're a story time presenter, you know you have those kids for a very brief time, maybe you've only -- they only come from the ages of 2-3 or 3-4.
Those kids can't wait for someone who has more skills to come along.
You're the one who is in their circle of environment, and if you're not going to do it, who will?
>> So first of all, I'm here to tell you that you are probably more the expert than you realize at doing this.
Especially if you've already been doing story time.
You're awesome, you are -- you're fantastic, there may be a couple of tips that may make the difference.
You're going to be using the same story you're already doing.
The key thing I'm going to emphasize is take advantage of the people who are already coming to your library.
Especially if you don't speak Spanish, but even if you do.
Look at finding the Spanish-speaking volunteers.
And I'm not talking about just a volunteer who is going to take over the story time and read the books, I'm talking about recruiting them to just help you even plan the story time.
And then the actual story time, having them help you do the Spanish reading and translation.
>> Tina: It's okay to make mistakes in story time.
I know in my English story times I make mistakes all the time.
I'll be reading a book and I'll get the word wrong, or I'll be singing a song and sing the wrong verse and ask the group to start over.
And the kids think it's hilarious.
They love it when I make mistakes.
And trying to speak in another language in this really supportive environment of story time is going to be the same way.
It's okay to make mistakes.
It's okay to say the words wrong or try to say it and ham it up, the kids will love it.
The English kids will like that you're just like they are where they are unfamiliar with the words too, and the kids who are speaking the other languages are going to think you're just the greatest thing since ice cream.
So it's okay to make mistakes.
At the end of the day, it's just going to be you, a bunch of kids, and parents having fun together.
Even if you're adding elements that you're not really familiar with yet.
When I was started doing this, I felt like I was a first-year story time presenter again, because it did -- I had practiced a little more during my planning, I had to struggle a little bit more in picking the right materials, but I got back up to speed really quickly.
So during that first session of doing bilingual story times, I wasn't able to use the tips and tricks I had been using to cut down on my story time planning, but I got back up to speed after just one six-week session, I was planning much faster and closer to the time it took me to plan my English story time.
>> Davey: So this may sound a little bit facetious, but first, for anybody who is saying they don't speak Spanish, I will say there is the opportunity to learn.
That is not what the whole presentation is going to be about, but it might be worth looking into.
A lot of libraries, you already have the resources on your website, if you can get the help from -- the backup from your managers, your admins to do the learning, also if you can -- just take time every day, they say 20 minutes a day, and you will find yourself doing better.
So I just want to say that first, but yes, learning Spanish or whatever language you're presenting would be an awesome option.
But the very key thing, like I said before, is please do not start bilingual story time until you've made some relationships.
This is what I would say for me personally was the number one rb I was not successful with bilingual story time, and I would agree that it's probably the same for anyone.
Now, I am bilingual, I speak Spanish.
And I was still unsuccessful, and I saw people talking about people not coming.
I'm not talking about how you can make those relationships, but please, before you do anything else, make some relationships.
>> Tina: I am not bilingual, and so when I was looking for what kind of language training I needed, I didn't feel like I had the time to really start taking lessons or doing set lesson plans, but what I did have was a need to learn very specific terminology in the language that I wanted to share in Spanish.
And so I started with just a one-page paper that I don't even know where it came from, but it was an introduction of how to get a library card, and it was called a point and say, where it had the sentence you would say in English and it had the same sentence in Spanish.
And what that one-page paper showed me was what the word "book" was.
So just some specific words that I needed to know as a librarian, and words as I was doing the story times I would go oh, I wish I knew what that word was, so I just started building a very personalized vocabulary list of words that I wanted to be able to say in that language.
And that was basically the only language learning that I really did purposefully.
Everything else just happened naturally just like the kids were learning the language during the program, so was I.
>> Davey: Back to taking advantage of your patronage.
When I talk about volunteers, I want to make clear it doesn't mean just having somebody be there with you presenting the story time.
I'm talking about a relationship who can help you plan the story time.
They can help you understand what the needs are.
What are their favorite songs, what are their favorite books, what are their favorite stories?
What times work for them for the program?
And really the biggest reason for that is to meet that need when you're saying people aren't coming.
You spend enough time with one of these patrons, they will become more invested and you've already hopefully got people coming to your program because they're the ones helping you plan it.
Also, while you're doing the story time, it is okay to invite someone up to read for you, or to help with some translation.
Maybe this isn't during the story time, maybe this this is, hey, I'm preparing for next week, do you have any ideas, will you help me with something I'm planning for next week?
Also helping them contribute with the songs.
Letting them tell you drive what do we want to sing, what do we want to teach our kids?
What are the songs that I remember singing when I was a kid?
>> Tina: The best thing I found when I was trying to build these relationships and do my research was it's not help until to go up to someone and say hey, I'm thinking of doing this, could you help me with that?
That didn't go over so well.
What worked really well is when I had a specific request, so if I had an early literacy test that I really wanted to share, I would ask, here is my test, can you translate this one paragraph for me?
Or, here are three books I'm thinking of using in my story time, could you look these over and tell me which one you think would be the best one to use?
So asking for specific requests helped me do my research and build my relationships at the same  time.
>> Davey: So first of all, we provided a handout with the standard outline that you could use.
You don't have to stick to it, it's not like the winning -- you don't win just by doing the outline, but it's helpful to let you see how you could build a story time, even if you don't speak Spanish, that is bilingual.
The biggest key to the actual bilingual story time especially when you don't speak Spanish, is you stick to short books.
Keeping a culturally relevant but doing lots of music.
And remember it's story time.
Be fun.
Dot things you're already doing that you love, that you love to do, that the kids love to do, make sure you're including those even if they're just in English.
But make sure they're included in your story time.
>> Tina: In the picture on here you'll see my living resource.
This is the person who made my bilingual stories possible.
This is Gloria.
Gloria was the -- she was a staff member at my library who was a bilingual speaker, she was fluent in Spanish and English, but she had absolutely no story time experience at all.
And it was difficult negotiating with our management to get her to help me with this.
I had to promise that I would not take up more than one hour of her time a week.
So we had our half hour program, and then she had 30 minutes a week that she could use to help prepare herself to help with this program.
But what I'm trying to illustrate here is that when you take care of all the planning and the research and all of that, you really only need your volunteers to help with those specific elements that you can't do yourself.
When Gloria and I first started coleading, which is the picture you see on the slide, she was very, very nervous.
But she got very familiar with it very quickly, and pretty soon as you can see up at the top of the page, she was totally willing to get up there with me as we were doing ribbon dancing, and other kinds of things.
But even though she was nervous at the start, she got a lot more comfortable with it really quickly.
>> Davey: So right here I'm presenting our thesis.
We are going to go over every single part of this.
Basically we're going to start with books.
We're going to talk about how you can pick a good book for bilingual story time.
I suggest paying attention to your favorites.
The ones you're already using.
Same thing with songs.
Start with the songs you love.
Start with the songs the kids love.
Use the same finger plays you're already doing.
You don't need to reinvent the wheel.
Maybe find a translation, one or five of the words that is in that finger play and practice that word.
That's the word you learn together.
Bilingual story time is really important that you realize that you can be learning just as much the Spanish or whatever language as the people who are in your story time.
Play games.
The games you love, play them again and practice the same words you did with your finger play.
You can tie the same words into the books.
If you're trying to think what words to learn and you're doing a book about colors, make sure those four or five colors are the words you're learning through the whole story time.
The repetitiveness is key.
Also, don't be afraid to throw in digital media.
It's okay to play a YouTube performer, it's okay to use TumbleBooks.
It's okay to use music or any kind of visual.
In fact, sometimes that can be what makes or breaks the bilingual story time, especially again if you don't speak the language.
Finally, getting those early literacy tips, we always try to throw these in, but if you -- sometimes the translation, we're going to talk about how you can get a good translation for the early literacy tips.
>> Tina: Here is a basic 20-minute Spanish bilingual story time plan.
You'll notice that there's only one, two, three, four, five, six -- there's only nine things on  this.
So if you think of it that way, I only have to come up with nine things, and truthfully, only five of them have to be in the other language.
This becomes a much more manageable process.
So what I would often do is take the story time I was already doing and I would only change half of it.
I would keep the half that were my favorite elements in the English, and then I would change the other half to the Spanish language.
>> Davey: Like I said, this is to adapt.
You don't have to follow this completely, maybe you're not doing -- this is a very simple way to start.
Just organize it, and you'll probably notice, it looks a lot like the story time you're already doing.
>> Tina: Okay, so short.
We're talking really short books for both languages.
You have -- everyone has a shorter attention span when you're hearing something you don't  understand.
So this is happening for both sides of the language barrier.
When you're reading in the Spanish language, your English speakers have a shorter attention span.
And when you're reading in the opposite way, it's happening.
So even your English books need to be really short books.
But don't be afraid to use your favorite books.
Your enthusiasm is going to translate just like it always does.
It's also really great to take some of your favorite books and especially if it has a repetitive phrase or phrase that you can add, or there are books out there that have a few words in Spanish that are already bilingual text, or where you could replace one or two words with bilingual text.
Just remember, it's still half English for the bilingual story time.
>> Davey: Yes, so now we're talking about doing the bilingual story time when you don't have a fluent reader.
There are books that already have some words translated, and like I said, you can share those on this list.
We also have handouts to look at.
And then we have the phrases or words in Spanish.
The whole book won't be just Spanish or it might have English, a little Spanish, there might be a lot of Spanish, a little bit of English.
You can also consider translating a couple words or phrases from your favorite English songs or books and rhymes.
So taking the skippy john johns, and translate can a couple words you like.
Picking a book, like a book that everybody loves to intore act with, if you're afraid to read a book in Spanish, do the English version, just learn the words to the colors.
So we're talking yellow, or do the blue and do Azul.
Instead just through in a couple of the words and translate them.
Or like I said again, the media can be helpful.
Find the book that you can just put in a C.D. player or play it somehow, .mp3s or whatever, and have it playing and reading it while you hold the book out in front.
Then to have the native speaker reading the book out loud to the audience and to you is another  really great way to do this without a fluent reader.
So this is another way to get that digital media going.
I realize it's a shout out to TumbleBooks or Weston Woods.
There are other options are, this is what on our library system uses.
If you check out TumbleBooks, for example, you can actually throw it up on the wall, it will play the book slowly, the key thing to do here, though, is that you engage in the reading as well.
You don't want the kids to get lost and think this is just another video.
Dot active reading, model for the kids and the parents, how they can -- how they should be paying attention during story time.
It's a wonderful way to one, get the interactive fun book in front, have the fluent speaker reading it, but you be the model of what to do while you're listening.
>> Tina: If you're using these digital media themes, one thing I suggest is to do everything you can to get the screen down to the kids' level.
So if you have a projector, keep it lower down on the wall.
If you're using a T.V., see if you can get an adjustable stamped so the screen is more on their level.
That can be a really good tip when you're using digital materials, in any language in your story time.
>> Davey: I'm going to stop and answer this one question about the different languages.
We are right now currently talking about a bilingual story time, which is going to be the two languages.
To remember, the goal is that you incorporate those two languages into the story time.
So some of your participants will be learning English during this presentation, some of them will be learning Spanish during the story time.
If you're dealing with a multilingual, first of all make sure you're presenting it and marketing it as a multilingual so people will be expecting more than just two languages, but then do the same thing we're doing, but just include another language into this.
So you would be doing all three languages.
That might get complicated, but that's one way you could address that.
>> David, can I ask one more follow-up question of you all that came up a little bit earlier?
You might not have seen it.
Someone mentioned that they do have a Spanish story time with a fluent native speaker, but if they're interested in offering additional story times and they don't speak Spanish, how are you sensitive to advertising it or promoting it so that patrons aren't offended or disappointed?
Have you ever encountered that situation?
>> Davey: Okay.
So to make sure I understand, the goal is that we are presenting a Spanish story time or a bilingual story time?
>> That's a good question.
It may have been a Spanish story time.
I think maybe then the key is promoting it as bilingual, that's a good distinction for sure.
But do you think in terms of framing -- and I just have to tell you that somebody said they've been using the term "sprinkling" when they talk about their bilingual story times, so that the languages are sprinkled into the story times, it's not truly bilingual, but there's words and phrases in the other language.
So that seems like one way to promote it in a way so that it's not one language or purely bilingual.
But, yeah, I'm curious if you've gotten the sense if people would be offended in terms of sort of a more flexible story time rather than a pure Spanish or even pure bilingual.
>> Davey: Okay.
So I'm going to say I do see this quick, it talks about -- they have a Spanish story time and they're going to offer additional story times, and it's not presented by the native speaker and they want to make sure the parents are not offended or disappointed.
Just make sure when you're presenting it that you're saying that it is bilingual story time.
If you're presenting it as solely Spanish or solely English, it should be solely Spanish or solely English.
Obviously you can help people wanting to learn the languages in there, but make sure if it is bilingual, that you present it as bilingual.
>> Tina: One thing would I recommend, when you're creating your marketing flyers for a bilingual story time, try and get the text in English and Spanish both on the same sign.
I think that would be very, very helpful if you're trying to promote a Spanish story time separately than your bilingual story time.
And you're worrying about offending people, and I want to address that just a bit.
Don't be afraid to offend someone.
Don't be afraid to start the conversation.
So you're reading a book, and -- or that's what your living resources, that's what your relationship building is for.
You come up to someone and say, you know, which of these books would be best?
And why and why not?
You're not -- when you start out, take advantage of the fact you're a complete beginner and know nothing.
And admit to that and say, hey, I don't know anything about this, I don't know if this is going to be offensive, but I want to learn.
And I think if you come at it from that point of view, that is where your cultural relevancy is going to start building.
That's where you're going to start making them more than just an English translation, is when you build on those relationships.
If someone gets offended, I think that's going to be awesome.
Because that person is going to come up and they're going to talk to you.
Or you're going to talk -- they're going to talk to someone else and that person is going to talk to you, and you're going to have an opportunity for a conversation that's going to make your materials more relevant.
>> Thank you.
That's so helpful.
Thank you so much.
>> Davey: And this is where you take advantage again, like I said, don't start until you have  created some relationships for the people you want to be in your story time.
Because if you can talk to them about anything that might not be -- might seem offensive and you're worried it's going to come across, talk to these experts is what I'll call them, your relationships, and they can help you realize maybe you didn't realize something could come across offensive, or it's not really something to worry about.
Now on this slide we're talking about now, let's say you have a fluent reader, or you are the fluent reader, grab some Spanish books or whatever language, and do the same instructions you do for an English story time.
Maybe it's your volunteer that's going to be reading -- if this is -- grab a couple choices, three to four books.
And let them read through them and see the ones they would like to read.
Because it's very important the reader is excited about the reading, and also knows what the story is.
I want to talk specifically about using traditional stories that have been translated into English or Spanish, or just in general the fables.
You will notice that most, especially when you're dealing with Spanish books, you'll get these  really, really great stories that are 20 or 30 minutes long to read.
Please don't read those stories.
Or come up with an option to shorten them.
Especially if you've got the fluent reader.
Do you not want to -- they are great stories, but that long is not okay for story time.
So I would stay make sure that you are culturally relevant by using the songs, using the words,  using the language, but grab the stories that you love and you know your audience loves.
Not something that's going to potentially bore them or make them not want to come again.
>> Tina: We have the same problem with English story tales.
It's not possible to find a really good version of some of those traditional stories that is good for story time.
So don't be afraid to leave those out, they're not appropriate for a group program like that.
You can share them, have the kids take them home, but don't use them in your story time.
The other thing we wanted to do with the fluent reader is coreading.
This is where you have both your English and your foreign language person sitting in front of the room, you both have copies of the same book, and you're reading it in both languages.
Then you both turn the page together.
This works really well when you have a book available in English and in the language that you're going for.
 a shorter book is easier to find someone to translate and English only -- so that one way to view this is put the Spanish text on post-it notes and put it on the back cover of the book.
So that -- or to -- even use post-its to cover up the text of two copies of the English, and one of them you cover up with your Spanish translation.
>> Davey: I'm going to answer one of these comments here talking about if we're targeting  preschoolers, and that's a very good question, because what I have found mostly with my bilingual storytimes, I get attendance of all ages.
It's a family event.
And so you do need to be a little bit flexible in how you're presenting it, but we're talking for every age, whether it's babies, toddlers, preschoolers, school age, you still want to keep things short, you want to keep the attention there, you want to be practicing a couple of  words, you want to be kind of letting people get a feel of the different languages, but you still want to keep it simple.
Especially for babies and toddlers.
And do a lot more playing, right?
But I also want to -- beginning with books sprinkling with Spanish, definitely I would say start with what is most comfortable to you.
You want to make sure your storytime starts off at a bang, so if you want to start with English because that's what you love and it's going to be an English book to start, do it.
If you're excited about doing Spanish right away, do it.
But make sure it's what you want to do.
Because you want to have it start very fun.
So this is an interesting thing, so I speak Spanish, and I still grab native speakers to help me with pronunciation.
And I'm not a native speaker.
So I loved when I had the couple of families who came several times, I would start to ask them after storytime, would they like to read a book?
Would they like to let me know what songs they would like to sing?
Again, please, more than anything, make those relationships.
And then you can just be out there modeling, having fun, listening to your volunteer read the book.
And helping the kids, they're going to help us -- think it's hilarious when their mom and dad gets called up front to read the book to them.
They're going to love that.
And it's just a great opportunity to get that native speaker speaking as well.
Maybe it's not a native speaker, maybe you don't have native speakers coming, maybe your bilingual storytime is benefiting people who are trike to learn Spanish.
Again, the parents, they're bringing their kids probably because they want to be -- they want their kids to learn language.
They probably want to learn the language as well.
Get them up there reading the book.
It doesn't matter if they do it sloppy.
Get them excited about it, make sure they're okay, but you're not selecting them and they're uncomfortable.
But I think it's a great opportunity to make your storytime more interactive for the parents as  well.
And again, like we said, please stick to the short books.
Stick to the very interactive books.
Make sure this is fun.
>> Tina: We're going to move on from books and talk about music.
Of course finding music in -- especially children's music in a language you're not fluent with is more difficult.
This is where you're going to ask for recommendations from your -- the people you've been building relationships with.
On the screen we've got a couple of bilingual C.D.s, so the whistle -- the hot pea and butter, that's a total bilingual album.
The bouncy blue, those C.D.s only have one bilingual song on them.
But that one bilingual song was perfect.
So don't be afraid to really stretch out your resources here and look for things wherever they might be.
And always preview your songs.
>> Davey: I just want to say the reason why I say always preview your song, just like in English music, other language music, Spanish music, there can be a lot of really awful music.
Please do not just get excited because you found a translation to your song and get ready to go play it and never having listened to it before you play it.
Please always preview it.
It may not even have the right rhythm that you thought it should, the translations might be really sloppy, we will give you a couple of great resources of our favorites that are really great, but please, always preview that music.
In any language, please, because there's a lot of awful kids' music out there.
>> Tina: All right.
So we've been talking about music, but this is storytime, and so even if you're not good at singing, you're going to end end up doing some singing.
It's really easy to incorporate multilingual elements with songs.
It's a great way to do it.
This is a great time to talk about repetition.
When you're doing bilingual storytimes, you want to double the repetition that you're doing in your English storytimes.
If you have eight favorite songs, play them three weeks in a row.
So your top three for two or three weeks, and your next three for two or three weeks.
Don't be afraid to use a lot of repetition in your bilingual storytimes.
The English kids are going to like it better because they're starting to get more familiar with it, and vice versa.
So a good way to add in some vocal music that's really easy to learn is with your welcome songs and your goodbye songs.
So I have a couple of my favorites up here on the screen.
And that's a really great way to start adding in that second element.
And it's easy to find welcome and goodbye songs in many languages, just by doing a simple Google search.
The other thing that I really wanted to find when I was doing my bilingual storytimes was I wanted my favorite songs in the other language.
And the song you see in the green is what I found when I started doing my research for itsy bitSY spider.
I could not figure out how to sing that, it just was not usable for me.
That's going to happen while you're doing your research.
You're going to find something that looks like it might work, but in the end it really doesn't.
But I just kept searching, and I did eventually find in the mother goose on the loose book bilingual learners, I found a version I could sing.
And then I added in the chords because one of the things I do in my storytimes is I play the  ukulele.
I can only do two strumming methods and five chords, but the three -- 2 and 3-year-olds absolutely love it.
What we're going to do now is I'm going to show off a little bit and I'm going to sing the song for you, just to show you that you really can do it.
And after three or four weeks I had this song down.
I could do this one.
Here we go, get your fingers ready.
[singing in Spanish]
You true bilingual speakers, you can in the chat tell me how I did.
>> Davey: I think she wanted to show this because she does not speak Spanish.
She wanted to show everybody here that you can do this even if you don't speak Spanish.
You just have to go for it.
So I want to talk a little bit about digital resources now.
Let's say you feel uncomfortable still doing all of the presentation in a language you don't understand, you don't feel comfortable.
Take advantage of the digital resources, maybe until you do, or maybe just incorporate them as part of your bilingual storytime.
So we have included in our resources a lot of different links of some of our favorites, but what this looks like for me, I'd have our T.V. sitting behind me, I would do probably two-thirds of my storytime, and then I would just judge, are people starting to get a little bit anxious, are the kids starting to wiggle too much?
And then I would say, okay, we're going to do a song.
And I would grab a song, and it's very important you grab a song that is first culturally relevant.
This is your opportunity to grab somebody who speaks Spanish, looks -- they actually are from whatever country you're trying to represent, brings in that cultural relevancy, and makes sure that kids are involved in these.
I love the songs where you got the kids doing the actions on the screen, so that you also can be out there modeling the kids get to see it, they get to stand up, you don't need to know the words.
You don't need to know the songs, you don't need to necessarily know everything that they're saying, you're following along just as much as any other person in the storytime is, that also doesn't know the language.
I felt this is the thing, even though I spoke Spanish, this is the thing that changed why people came to my storytimes.
So besides also making those relationships, making sure I was finding the people that were coming, that this is the other part that made it effective.
The parents were engaged, the kids were engaged, and it was in a native speaker.
Actually presenting the song.
It was a lot of fun.
>> Tina: These are music videos, you're looking for music videos that have a lot of kids on the screen doing the motions, and you're looking for things that have large motor skill movements.
Because remember, this is what you plan when you're losing the audience and you need to pull them back in.
So this is an example of, we have some questions about using your props.
This is is a great time to pull these out.
To do the five monkeys, all you need to know is the word for monkeys in Spanish and be able to count to five, and you can do your five little monkey flannels.
I had to -- I had to call in -- I had an appointment and I wasn't going to make it to one of my storytimes, so I had one of my fellow librarians step in.
And she is the one who created the handout that you see on the screen, and this is a very popular Spanish song, and what she did is she did something I wouldn't have thought of, and she did a printout of all of the different objects, and then during the song, they would hold the object up during that song to help learn some more vocabulary.
The other thing you see on the screen is, I've got ribbons I'm passing out, and what I did was I had a holder that had all of the different colors on it, so the kids would come up and put the -- match up the colors, and every time they did, we would say the color together.
So they would bring up the red ring and we would say oh, Rojo, you have the Rojo.
And it was really great way to have a fun activity and be passing out and collecting materials, and incorporating the language.
One other thing that you should do is use what you've got.
So if you have flannel pieces for a specific theme, don't feel like you have to recreate the wheel here.
Use the things you already have.
>> Davey: So I wanted to talk about one thing, so in my English storytimes, I have a lot of success, I don't know -- the kids loved wheels on the bus.
That was their favorite song in English.
And we he -- or any transportation songs, moving songs like that.
So we made these frisbees and printed out a little steering wheel picture on it, and I probably used these every other storytime.
The kids could not get enough.
Who doesn't love wheels on the bus?
So I tested it one time, okay, I gotta find a wheels on the bus version in Spanish that I liked, which is included, and once I got that, I pulled out the steering wheels.
And it, again, it didn't matter -- most of the kids in my bilingual storytime did not speak Spanish.
Most of them did not come from families who spoke Spanish.
They were there to learn Spanish.
Those kids got so excited to sit down with those steering wheels and just go through the whole song.
And they were learning the words.
We probably did this every other storytime.
That song might as well have been my welcome song.
We did it every single time.
And the kids, even the kids who kind of were reluctant to be there, they sat down immediately.
Okay, we're doing wheels on the bus.
So find those props that make the kids excited.
That get the kids involved.
That -- especially when you're watching the kids who do not seem to feel as comfortable with those foreign languages.
It might be intimidating.
Get them involved that way.
Put something in their hand, right?
I think that is something that we'll also -- will also tie the word.
Especially when you're handing out cups, here's a spoon,.
[SPEAKING SPANISH]
, if you just keep handing them out, give them a physical object they can hold on to and tie that to the word, they -- they're probably going to learn it, and they'll probably learn it faster than you do.
>> Tina: We're going to shift gears a little bit, we've been talking about all of the things you can do to adapt your current storytime to a bilingual storytime, and now we're going to shift to a fiewf our favorite tips and tricks for making this work.
What you have here is my music and movement program.
So at my library, programming changes as soon as the kids get out of school.
The attendance at our storytime changes, who is coming to our storytime changes, the ages of the kids, all that changes.
But I was having so much fun with my bilingual storytimes that I wanted to keep the momentum going, and so I created a bilingual music and movement program.
And so we've included that here, it's also in the handout.
And I just want to show you that if you're not ready for storytime yet, this will be a great way to start bilingual programming.
On the left you'll see all of the very lab leab -- all of the vocabulary you'll need to complete this program, and you'll see I did include one bilingual book in that during the program.
So this was a great way for me to have a great active program that was still bilingual, and it let me keep my favorite songs I had been using during storytime, and use them again.
So my absolute very favorite Spanish song that I did was on the screen.
You'll see on the words -- all the words you need to know, everything you need is right there ready to go.
>> Davey: I wanted to give you an example, something else -- if somebody asks how do you make sure your advertising doesn't come across as offensive.
I saw in the chat, I think it's very important that you make sure that -- I guess double sided  flyers are okay, but if you can include everything on the front side, what that says to your audience is that this is for both of them.
This is for English, this is for Spanish.
I think it's really important that you make sure that it is very clear the goal of your program.
Even by the way you market it.
>> Tina: Often, this is really important, when you're doing the signage, make sure your English and your other language, that the words mean the same thing.
Often you'll have kids who are translating for their parents, and so it's really helpful for them when they are reading both languages and it's saying the same thing.
And talking about who is coming to these programs, you've got these flyers, the people coming to my bilingual programs were people who are doing home schools, who wanted their children exposed to another language.
My regulars that came to everything I did, no matter what it was, they were coming to my bilingual storytimes.
Gloria was making invitations to people while she was working at the desk, and those people who -- that's where the relationships were building, when they were getting those personalized invitations in their own language to come to the program.
So we're going to hurry up and finish with these last few slides.
This was my translation process.
Davy didn't have to do this because he's bilingual, he can do 90 both language, but I was not, so I had to get things translated.
The easiest way I found to do that was to write what I wanted to say in English, put it into the Google Translate in -- to get the Spanish, and then give both of those to my person, and ask her to translate it.
If you just hand something to someone, they say oh, no, I'm not good at translating, I can't do  this, so doing that second step that middle step of adding in the Google Translate, Gloria would look at this and she would go, I would never say that!
That is so silly!
So don't trust the Google Translate, but she would -- that would give her material to help her translate it correctly.
And this translation process would trigger cultural conversation.
So Gloria, I asked her about the head, shoulders, knees, and toes, she did the translation, then she also sent me, the version I learned as a girl in my country was different.
And here's what it was.
And so it's a great way to improve -- this is a great location to improve your cultural relevancy.
>> Davey: So we are now to the early literacy tips part of the program.
This will be directly for Spanish, it gets a little bit more difficult when you're talking French, I still have other options.
But if you just want to follow the links to Utah kids ready to read, or every child ready to read, they literally already have all of the early literacy tips, either in video form, somebody saying them in the language that you want it to be, or you can just translate it by clicking right here if you see Utah kids ready to read, up in the top right corner, click translate to Spanish, and go pick one.
They will already be in the language you want.
So that's really easy for Spanish.
Now, if you're going to be doing it for another language, that's where you're going to need to get your expert -- your volunteer to help you do that.
I think it's very important that we hurry and talk about the -- there's a lot of other webinars that talk about the different successionful marketing towards Hispanic Latinos, and other types, but -- other groups, but what I would say is just make sure that when you're talking to your volunteers, you find out when is the time that works for them?
What are the barriers they are facing to make it to your program?
Also make sure they understand the expectations.
That they understand what's going to happen in story time, but what are your expectations?
For me, I had to change the fact that I did not start on time.
If I said it was 11:00, we didn't start until 11:15.
Or 11:30 sometimes.
We might play first, like the kids already in, go ahead.
But I had to be willing to adjust to the needs of any cultural differences that might happen.
There might be an expectation of everybody has to sit the whole time, you may need to adjust that.
Not everybody is -- it might not be culturally normal for a kid to sit down for 30 minutes.
They might not be used to that.
The same thing for English storytime.
You need to be adaptful, if that's a word, to whatever those cultural differences might be.
Again, this is where you need to get that volunteer.
Find out what's going on.
Talk to the parents who come.
Even if it's a small group, find out what that -- maybe that one mom and the two kids that came, find out what are they hoping for?
What are they expecting?
What time works better for them, or is this the time that works?
And get them excited that they come back.
Because you paid attention to their needs specifically.
>> Tina: And this process will work with other languages.
You're going to be able to find French motor movement songs on YouTube.
You're going to be able to find -- if you're planning to do a bilingual storytime, I'm hoping it's because you're seeing people in your library that that's their language.
And remember, no matter what language you're doing this process in, half of it is still English.
Half of it is your enthusiasm, sharing your favorites in your language.
>> Davey: So I'm going to give you a quick example, so I do speak Spanish, but I don't speak French.
So I had to go through, we actually have a dual immersion program where they do French through elementary all the way through junior high.
That school had some needs.
They didn't have a collection.
I had to get creative and build a collection of French materials.
I had to go out and talk with the librarians at that school, I talked to the principal at that school, I even went to our local community college and found a volunteer who is here in that picture, and had her help me do a French program.
She was my French speaker.
But the most important thing we did, I did the exact same program I was doing for these elementary school aged kids, and I just threw in some French.
I first made the relationships, found out what they needed, I took the program I already was doing, and then I threw up on the Walla couple of words in English and French, and muddled through it, and the kids joked a lot, but I didn't know what I was saying, but we were having so much fun.
Just following the same things we talked here, you can do this for every single language that's out there.
You can do this for ASL.
You can do this for anything like that.
It's just being able to adapt what you're already doing so that you can be presenting programs that are relevant to your community.
>> Tina: And don't be afraid to go out and ask your colleagues for help with this process.
Get on the list serves do you to, the Facebook groups you go to, there are people out there doing storytimes in that language, and I'm absolutely sure they would be great resources for you to start your planning process.
We do have resources we'd like to share with you.
These were our top picks.
If you're doing Spanish storytimes, Spanish bilingual storytimes, the school library journal has a libro por libro article they put up on their blog, and that is a great resource in our handouts we have instructions on how you can find just those particular articles on the school library journal website.
We also -- and this particular resource is good for bilingual storytimes of any language, these are resources that have been created for head start teachers on how to select bilingual children's books and how to use bilingual books in the classroom.
These are government resources, so they're freely available, the instructions on finding these are also in our handout.
>> Davey: And we probably couldn't talk about storytime without mentioning also Jbrary's blog.
Please take a look at the multilingual storytimes they have there.
In fact, I want to talk about looking additional I want to talk about ASL storytimes.
I actually, we talked -- I also had the opportunity to participate in a  Spanish-English-ASL-multilingual storytime.
The answer is yes, it was amazing.
How did that work?
I had to get those relationships.
I had to find people who were in that community that could bring a volunteer to help me.
I don't know ASL, and we found someone who knew Spanish ASL, which is different than American Sign Language, right?
So we had a storytime, I had a volunteer in front signing, I had me doing the English and the Spanish, and it was amazing.
We had a great crowd, even the kids who were super surprised to discover sign language in the storytime were engaged.
They were learning ASL.
They were learning the Spanish.
It was amazing, and, yes, the key to what I'm getting at is please, if you are here, it's because you think this is important.
Go do it.
But you need to find the relationships.
Find the people in the groups that you're trying to reach.
Find the people who can help you make this successful.
Don't do it, don't promote it until you've done that first.
You'll have success, you'll have people already built into your program, you'll have attendees already built into your program, and the best part is when the people come, what they expect to find is what they're going to get.
It's going to be fun.
And thank you for coming.
>> Tina: And remember, it's just storytime.
It's going to be you, the kids, and their parents, in a room having fun together.
>> Fantastic.
Thank you so much David and Tina.
This is so exciting, and I really enjoyed seeing the contributions to chat, some really great work going on in your communities as well.
There were a few outstanding questions that I'll actually send to Tina and David, but if you want to go to the next slide, I know they're also providing their contact information for you all to touch base with them.
So don't hesitate to do that as well.
And we'll go ahead and wrap up our session now.
I'm going to send you all to a short survey as you leave, that will collect some feedback for our presenters and for us in our ongoing programming.
And I'll also send you all an email once the recording is posted and I'll send you all a certificate for joining today within the week.
So you can keep an eye out for that as well.
Thank you again Tina and Davy, we will look forward to hearing from our participants the great work you've inspired in their communities.
Thanks again.