Oso pardo, oso pardo, ¿qué ves ahí? Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see?

Children are bringing home new words from preschool and many of them are Spanish.

At Kaleidoscope, director Amber Paulsen has 23 students in her preschool class, seven of which are learning English as their second language. Most of the curriculum that Paulsen provides is presented in both English and Spanish languages. She sees this as an opportunity for all her students to learn a new language alongside each other.

“I see the diversity in our classroom as a benefit to all my students,” Paulsen said. “I’m really excited about the trend of engaging these families early.”

Paulsen explains that her preschool has no separate curriculum for children who have English or Spanish as their first language. Paulsen speaks Spanish as her second language and two of her fellow teachers are native Spanish speakers.

“It’s just part of our day,” Paulsen said. “It has happened so naturally. When we present things to them at this age, they absorb and welcome it all.”

Paulsen wants to emphasize that her bilingual class is a benefit to the entire community.

“If you grow up with your friends just being your friends, you see your similarities first, and the differences are less noticed later,” Paulsen said.

A large part of the preschool’s curriculum is based on storybooks. She chooses books that are told with English and Spanish on every page. They just finished the Brown Bear, Brown Bear books by Eric Carle.

Paulsen says it has been a struggle to find high quality books in both English and Spanish and traditional stories are especially difficult to find. A copy of every book used in Paulsen’s curriculum is sent home with the child for the family to keep thanks to the Orcas Island Community Foundation.

Two years ago, the first Spanish-speaking family enrolled their child in Kaleidoscope’s preschool. Last year there were four. This year’s seven shows a steady growth rate of Spanish-speaking students enrolling in her preschool. Paulsen was surprised by the increase, but had hoped for it. She contributes the increase in part to growing relationships between the schools, parents, and social services reaching Spanish-speaking families and helping them to access early education for their children.

Paulsen has learned herself in the process. Fellow teachers, Cristal Carreon and Enedelia Perez, have shown her cultural norms that Paulsen didn’t know before, like the respected role a teacher plays in the life of most Spanish-speaking families. Carreon and Perez routinely help with parent communication and Perez also has introduced foods to the meal schedule that are culturally familiar.

Perez enrolled her daughter, Iris, in Kaleidoscope two years ago. Iris is now in kindergarden at Orcas School. Perez speaks all Spanish at home because she wants the best of both languages, and she likes that Iris and her 10 year-old son, Luis, are learning both. Paulsen has a special place in the lives of many of the Spanish-speaking families on Orcas, Perez says, because they feel most comfortable communicating with her.

Across the road at Orcas Montessori School, director Teresa Chocano currently has five students with Spanish as their first language, which represents twenty percent of their enrollment. That number has remained the same for the last three years.

Chocano explains that although they do not present their curriculum in both languages like Kaleidoscope, the Montessori model of education is to taylor each students’ curriculum to them personally.

“It works really well for non-native English speakers because a lot of the materials are hands-on, and no lengthy explanation is required,” Chocano said. “When the students come in, I talk to them in Spanish quite a bit so that if they need to express something they know that they don’t need to express it in English.”

Chocano believes it is important for all children to attend preschool and guesses it’s due to the work of Orcas outreach organizations that Spanish-speaking families continue to enroll their kids in Orcas preschools.

“There are a lot of skills that they can learn by attending a preschool which will make it a lot easier for them when they enter school- the academic and social skills. And that is true for both native and non-native English speakers actually,” Chocano said.

“Everyone has been so excited and really celebrating the fact that this is happening,” Paulsen said.

Oso pardo, oso pardo, ¿qué ves ahí? I see a preschool learning with me.