Language gives children access to people. People give children access to stories, perspectives, traditions, relationships, and ways of seeing the world. That idea sits at the center of Spanish immersion at Sounds and Colors, and during Latino Appreciation Week it feels like the right place to begin.
When families ask what a Spanish immersion school offers, the first answer is usually fluency. While children do grow in Spanish day by day in our schools, what we see in our classrooms is larger still: Spanish becomes the way children come to know the people who care for them, and through those people, a wider world.
Spanish Immersion Opens the Door to People
Every word in a new language arrives with a person attached. It comes with a voice and a face, a particular way of saying buenos días, or a song someone first heard from a grandmother.
Young children learn Spanish the way they learned their first language, inside relationships. They pick it up through play, routines, and conversation with adults they trust. In a Reggio Emilia-inspired classroom, where educators practice a pedagogy of listening, those conversations follow the children’s own questions and ideas.
Families curious about the developmental side of growing up with two languages can read our earlier reflection on the benefits of growing up bilingual. This piece is about the people who make that learning possible.
Our Educators Carry More Than a Language
Our educators come from Latin America. Each of them brings Spanish into the classroom, along with a history of family traditions, music, stories, expressions, celebrations, and ways of caring for children shaped in their home communities.
We think of our educators as knowledge holders. Their cultural and linguistic identities enrich our entire learning community, and children feel that richness long before they have words for it.
Researcher Emma Chen describes bilingual Latina educators as cultural mediators and relational connectors, people who help families and schools meet across languages and build partnerships grounded in respect.
Knowledge Carried From Home
Education researchers have long recognized that families and communities hold deep reserves of knowledge and experience. Luis Moll and his colleagues called these funds of knowledge and showed how they can become resources for learning when schools take them seriously.
In our classrooms, the knowledge our educators carry shows up in ordinary places: a song shared at morning gathering, a story told during mealtime, and the warmth of a greeting at the door each morning.
Where Two Worlds Meet Every Day
Latin American and U.S. cultures meet in the everyday rhythm of our schools. They meet in conversations and songs, in stories and celebrations, around the table, in the relationships between educators and families, and in the projects children build together.
How Does Spanish Immersion Build Cultural Understanding?
Children learn Spanish from educators who carry Latin American traditions, stories, and ways of relating. Through daily time with those educators, children come to know culture as something real people live and share. Understanding grows out of that closeness, one conversation at a time.
Food and celebrations are part of this, and children love them, but the deeper story lives in people: who they are, what they know, and how they show up for children each day. In the Reggio Emilia tradition, children and adults build learning together through listening and exchange. Culture grows the same way in our immersion classrooms
Learning With and From One Another
Cultural exchange here moves in every direction. Educators share their languages and traditions with children and families. Families share their own identities, histories, and knowledge with educators. Children carry ideas between home and school, and they often become the connection point between the two.
For families whose home language is English, this is an open invitation. Parents don’t need to speak Spanish to belong here. They are welcomed into real encounters with Spanish-speaking educators and the cultures they carry, at drop-off and pickup, at family gatherings, and through the documentation that makes children’s learning visible on our walls.
Scholar Django Paris has written about culturally sustaining pedagogy, an approach in which schools work to sustain linguistic and cultural pluralism. That idea is close to our hearts. Spanish and the cultures it carries are part of how we live together in every season of the school year.
Belonging Without Sameness
Young children notice differences with genuine curiosity. They recognize that people may speak different languages, celebrate different traditions, and bring different experiences into their lives. In a learning community like ours, these differences become opportunities for discovery, friendship, and meaningful relationships.
At Sounds and Colors, we believe that every child, family, and educator brings a wealth of experiences, languages, traditions, and knowledge that enriches our community. Here, difference becomes an invitation to relationship. Children encounter this richness naturally through everyday interactions, shared experiences, conversations, and play.
Since opening our doors in 2011, cultural and linguistic diversity has been an essential part of our identity. It is reflected in our Spanish immersion environment, our relationships with families, and our commitment to creating a community where every child experiences a sense of belonging.
Through these relationships, children begin to understand that there are many ways of living, communicating, and making sense of the world—and that each one offers something valuable to discover.
A Bridge to Connection
We are not asking children to choose between worlds. We are creating a place where worlds can meet.
At Sounds and Colors, Spanish becomes a bridge to people, and through people, to culture, relationship, belonging, and a wider world. It lets each of us cross toward one another while remaining fully who we are.
Discover a Community Committed to Growth
At Sounds and Colors, our commitment to continuous learning shapes the experiences we create every day. Through Reggio-inspired education, Spanish immersion, ongoing educator growth, strong relationships, and thoughtful reflection, we continue working to create meaningful opportunities for children to learn and thrive.
We would love for you to visit one of our campuses and meet the educators who bring this community to life.
Inspired by Reggio Emilia. Immersed in Spanish. Grounded with Love.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does my family need to speak Spanish for my child to attend a Spanish immersion school?
No. Children build Spanish naturally through play, daily routines, and close relationships with their educators, so no Spanish at home is needed. Parents are part of our whatever languages they speak, and they often find themselves picking up words and songs right alongside their children.
Are the teachers native Spanish speakers?
Yes. Spanish is the home language of our educators, and it is the language children hear throughout the day, in play, routines, meals, and conversation. Hearing it from people who grew up speaking it gives children natural rhythm, warmth, and expression they carry into their own Spanish.
Where are Sounds and Colors campuses located?
Sounds and Colors has campuses in Hillsborough, Cary, and Chapel Hill across the NC Triangle, each offering our Reggio Emilia-inspired Spanish immersion preschool program. A new Chapel Hill (South Creek) location is opening in February 2027. Families are welcome to plan a tour at any campus to see the classrooms and meet the educators.
