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During my interview with two Normal Public Librarians, Julia and Randi, I learned that they interact with a variety of texts throughout their day. They interact with texts such as academic journals, reviews on novels, and websites for programming research and technology programming. They use all of these different texts for programming and collection development. Julia and Randi gave me copies of multiple authentic texts that they use in their daily work. For this reflection, I chose to focus on an academic journal, "Beyond Bilingual: Making Storytime Inviting to All English Language Learners" by Rachel G. Payne and Jessica Rall. Julia and Randi introduced me to this article because they are always trying to expand the library to meet the needs of the community, and it relates back to education.

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"Beyond Bilingual: Making Storytime Inviting to All English Language  Learners" by Rachel G. Payne and Jessica Rall

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"Beyond Bilingual: Making Storytime Inviting to All English Language  Learners" by Rachel G. Payne and Jessica Rall

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Take the Stage!

Model with wordless books. Show families how they can "read" these books in any language.

Play a video of a storytime song or rhyme in another language. Always use videos from trusted sources or preview any video, preferably with a native speaker, before you share it.

Use props and puppets. Visuals help communicate story line, characters, emotions, and more.

Sing a book. Sing a classic illustrated songbook such as Jane Cabrera's Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star (Holiday House, 2012), or set a simple book, like Byron Barton's My House (HarperCollins, 2016), to an easy tune such as "Frère Jacques." The illustrations help convey what the song is about.

Read big books. Love 'em or hate 'em, these overpriced, oversize picture books are great for ELL families. They can follow along as you read.

Be expressive! Some stories can be told and understood mostly through sounds, facial expressions, and tone of voice, such as Moo! by David LaRochelle and Mike Wohnoutka (Bloomsbury, 2013) or Look! by Jeff Mack (Penguin, 2015).

A bilingual staff member recalls chatting with a Spanish-speaking mother who frequented storytime at the Cypress Hills Library, a branch of the Brooklyn Public Library (BPL) located in a predominantly immigrant neighborhood in Brooklyn, NY. Her daughter loved the program, and she knew the child was learning. But the mom admitted in Spanish, "I don't really understand what the librarian is telling me. I know it is important, but I have no idea what it is."

When we heard this story and other similar ones, we knew that despite our well-crafted parent engagement strategies, we were leaving many families behind. We needed to find a way to support those who were English language learners (ELL).

But how to do it in 33 languages-the number reportedly spoken by families who attend our programs? According to information from the U.S. Census, more than 300 languages are spoken across the United States. One in five U.S. households does not speak English at home, according to a 2015 American Community Survey. We want to encourage parents to read, talk, sing, write, and play-the components of Every Child Ready to Read (ECRR)-in the language they know best, but how can librarians bridge this divide?

With resources from two funders, $100,000 from the Altman Foundation, and additional support from the New York City Council, BPL has been able to offer storytimes in nine languages and train our staff to make their storytimes more accessible to ELL families. We are still growing in this area, but here is what we've learned so far.

The bilingual edge

Often, when we tell parents they should read with their child in their native language, parents say, "No, I want my child to learn English." Educators used to espouse the idea that children might develop "language confusion" with exposure to more than one language. However, more recent research shows bilingual brains have an edge. Speaking two languages actually benefits children's overall learnin g, marked by larger vocabularies, flexible problem-solving skills, and higher-level cognitive abilities. Bilingual learning also supports executive function, a set of mental skills that allow children to thrive academically, regulate emotions, and grow into efficient, productive, and physically and mentally healthier adults.

"It is critical that children whose first language is not English have engaging learning opportunities in their first language to improve their literacy success and support development of a second language," says Jamie Campbell Naidoo, professor at the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alabama and coauthor of Once Upon a Cuento: Bilingual Storytimes in English and Spanish (ALA Editions, 2016). "Bilingual storytime is a natural environment for English language learners to hear stories and songs that are culturally and linguistically relevant, supporting both their ethnic identity and language development."

Storytime in nine languages and counting

Simone Groene-Nieto, public services coordinator for special populations at Jefferson County (CO) Public Library, believes that multilingual programming "sends the message loud and clear that we care about diverse patrons and work hard to serve them at the same level we do our English-speaking patrons." At BPL, we wholeheartedly agree. But how could we make storytime in multiple languages happen?

To start, we hired and trained facilitators with early childhood backgrounds who spoke Arabic, Bengali, Chinese (Cantonese and Mandarin), French, Japanese, Kreyol, Spanish, Russian, and Urdu. We created a manual for these programs that introduced them to ECRR and provided templates for them to create their own storytimes in their language. This multilingual team promotes programs in their communities, assists in translating flyers, and recommends new foreign language books to add to the BPL collection. Since the fall of 2016, we have offered 328 sessions and we plan to make this program a regular part of our early literacy offerings.

Though not without growing pains, so far this approach has been a win-win for our libraries and their communities. Abby Garnett, a supervisor at our Cypress Hills Library branch, is enthusiastic about the outreach benefits of the program, which she scheduled adjacent to an English language discussion group. "This program was wonderful in welcoming Bangladeshi families into the library who previously may have been unaware of our programs for young children," she says. Beyond children's programming, storytimes in other languages can be a point of entry to the library for many adults. They "engage these families and often serve as the first introduction to people who may not be familiar with the wide array of services American libraries provide," Groene-Nieto says.

What's a monolinguist to do?

How do you proceed if you only speak English and have no funds to hire bilingual staff? Should you cram with Mango Languages and develop your own bilingual storytime? Naidoo and his Once Upon a Cuento coauthor, Katie Scherrer, say no. If you are not truly bilingual, don't advertise your storytime as such, they advise. You may be able to share " La araña pequeñita" (the Spanish version of "Itsy-Bitsy Spider"), but are you going to able to answer a mom's complex query in Spanish? "At a minimum, we recommend that anyone offering a bilingual storytime on his or her own be competent enough in both languages to handle basic polite conversation and common library transactions," they write.

What you can do is incorporate some multilingual content into your storytime. Karen MacPherson, children's and youth services coordinator at the Takoma Park (MD) Library, enthusiastically includes English language learners in the storytime community. "The overall language of our programs is English," she says. "But we always say 'good morning' to each other in a variety of languages, starting with the four most spoken by our patrons."

Librarians can also use the many books that have phrases in other languages. Try to get a native speaker to help you with your pronunciation. Consider translating a couple of words or phrases from your favorite English songs and rhymes. Shamsa Chaudhri, BPL's Urdu Storytime facilitator, adds elements of Urdu to English songs and books. "I use books with very few words, or interactive books, such as No No Yes Yes by Leslie Patricelli (Candlewick, 2008) or Press Here by Hervé Tullet (Chronicle, 2011), and I will translate a word or two per page into Urdu. I also sing English songs like 'Wheels on the Bus' and use Urdu for the action words."

Miriam Lang Budin, head of children's services at the Chappaqua (NY) Library, has offered multilingual-friendly programs in 27 languages by asking parents and caregivers to contribute songs and rhymes. "It occurred to me that they must have plenty of songs and rhymes in their native languages," she says. "I thought it would be great to have the opportunity to learn some of them."

Make it inviting

While a bunch of toddlers and grown-ups making their fingers crawl up waterspouts may make sense to us, it can be confusing to parents with limited English proficiency (LEP). To help them make sense of our storytime activities, we created the BPL Storytime Guide, a simple, brightly illustrated handout translated into nine languages, that explains what to expect and key things we hope people will learn. We also borrowed an idea from our sensory storytime programming and created storytime cards, which can be displayed in different sequences in a pocket chart. These act as an illustrated picture schedule and orient parents and children to the storytime elements.

To help parents and caregivers join in on "Itsy Bitsy Spider," we created a large-format, illustrated songbook of 17 favorites that can be displayed on an easel. Yesha Naik, a children's librarian at BPL's Central Library, uses chart paper to write popular songs and encourages parents to take a picture of it so they can sing on the go.

"It is impossible to overstate the critical role of trust in serving ELL families, perhaps now more than ever," Scherrer says. "Build on the trust that you are able to establish as a storytime provider to ensure that families have access to all aspects of library service." To bring trusted individuals from the community into BPL, we've recruited a few storytime ambassadors. These community members, usually bilingual parents, welcome and orient families to storytime in their own language.

Eva Raison, BPL immigrant services coordinator, suggests using English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) best practices by utilizing Plain English (or Plain Language; plainlanguage.gov). "Use accessible language, common words, as well as short declarative sentences to give directions during activities. Avoid idioms-"the cat's out of the bag!"-and jargon," Raison says. "Speak slowly, not louder; pause and check for understanding. Define key terms, like 'fingerplays,' and repeat key messages in different ways." Also, consider using English words that are cognates in other languages, such as "picture" instead of "drawing."

Libraries are for everyone, but more often than not, our everyday storytime practices can become barriers to families who do not speak English. We're still learning how to better serve ELL families at BPL, but we hope our initiatives send a strong message that the library is for everyone. In a country where people talk a lot about walls and borders, let's start building bridges-one cuento, or story, at a time.

Rachel G. Payne is BPL's coordinator of early childhood services. Jessica Ralli is coordinator of early literacy programs at BPL.
Resources for Multilingual Storytime Online resources
Jbrary's Beginner's Guide to Multilingual Storytimes: Resources for adding other languages into your storytime.

Burnaby Public Library's Embracing Diversity Project: Songs and rhymes in 15 languages!

Story Blocks: Songs and rhymes in nine languages from Colorado Libraries for Early Literacy.

Plain Language: Tips for using Plain Language in your oral and written communication.

Guidelines for Outreach to Immigrant Populations (EMIERT): A guide to support the development of library and programming that facilitate recent immigrants' inclusion and participation.

Books
Once Upon a Cuento: Bilingual Storytime in English and Spanish by Jamie Campbell Naidoo and Katie Scherrer, ALA Editions, 2016.

Early Literacy Programming en Español: Mother Goose on the Loose Programs for Bilingual Learners by Betsy Diamant-Cohen, Neal-Schuman Publishers, Inc., 2010.

Easy Bilingual or Multilingual Books to Read Aloud
The Cazuela That the Farm Maiden Stirred by Samantha R. Vamos, Rafael López (illus.) (Charlesbridge, 2011)

How Many Donkeys?: An Arabic Counting Tale by Margaret Read MacDonald, Nadia Jameel Taibah ; Carol Liddiment (illus.) (Albert Whitman, 2009)

Say Hello! by Rachel Isadora (G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2010)

The Wheels on the Tuk-Tuk by Surishtha Sehgal and Kabir Sehgal, Jess Golden (illus.) (Beach Lane Books, 2015)

How Hippo Says Hello! by Abigail Samoun, Sarah Watts (illus) (Sterling Children's Books, 2014)

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Beyond Bilingual: Making Storytime Inviting to All English Language Learners

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Take the Stage! Model with wordless books. Show families how they can "read" these books in any language. Play a video of a storytime song or rhyme in another language. Always use videos from trusted sources or preview any video, preferably with a native speaker, before you share it.

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In order to understand this article, readers would have to know specific vocabulary used in it. For example, people outside of the education world may not know who English Language Learners (ELL) and English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) are or what bilingual, multilingual, and monolingual means. To fully comprehend this article, people, in general, and students would have to know what these words mean. While it would be relatively simple for librarians or people within the education field to define these words because they interact with them consistently, students, on the other hand, would need some background knowledge on these specific vocabulary words. Furthermore, the general vocabulary words used in this article are rather complex for middle school students to comprehend. If one were to use this article in teaching, he or she would have to provide scaffolding and supports for students. If I were to use this article, I would scaffold the reading and have the students read it in class in short sections. This would not be an article that students could interact with on their own because it would be too complex and long for them to read.

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The syntax of this article would be easier for students and people, in general, to comprehend because the structure of the article is set up similarly to most articles. However, one aspect of the article that the students may need to know explicitly is to read the blue box on the side of the article. Some students may skip this box and think that it is not important. Nonetheless, the box is imperative because it provides examples for the reader about ways for families to use books and videos for their ELL children to read. Furthermore, when looking at the syntax of the website as a whole, students would need to know the structure of websites to use them. While this may seem like a tedious skill, it is essential for students. They need to know why there are drop boxes and buttons on the top of website pages and how articles are structured if they were to use it for a citation. Explaining these small aspects of websites to students helps them comprehend and explore them faster and easier, especially when the look of websites can vary.

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The discourse of this article for the general public is mostly reading. However, if librarians or students were to read this article, there would most likely be an oral discussion about it. For example, librarians might discuss with each other about how they would incorporate the ideas in the article to their library. After this discussion, the librarians might need to do more research on the topic to make a decision on the topic, or they may have to physically demonstrate to their bosses that this program needs to be implemented by having a mock trial of the program to see if it would be beneficial to the community. In this example, the discourse of the librarians goes further than just reading the article like someone from the general public might. The librarians would need to research and explain the text further. Furthermore, if students were to read this article in the discourse of language arts, they would most likely also have an oral discussion about it or there might be a written part where the students would express how their school library could incorporate some aspects of the article for their ELL peers. In both of these examples, there is a similar discourse in that they would both have an oral discussion about the article, but going beyond that, the discourses would be different. Teachers would want students to understand the content of the article, while librarians would use the information in the article to reach their end goal, whatever that might be.

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The authentic textbook that I chose to interact with is The Language of Literature by McDougal Littell, a traditional, seventh grade language arts textbook. In the textbook, the authentic text that I chose to interact with is "Eleanor Roosevelt" by William Jay Jacobs because it seemed like an interesting biography that incorporates language arts and social studies.

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The Language of Literature by McDougal Littell

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The Language of Literature by McDougal Littell

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In order to comprehend the text, "Eleanor Roosevelt," it is imperative that one can define words such as sanitarium, diphtheria, syndicated, tenement slums, etc. One aspect of this text that I like is that it defines more complex words at the bottom the page. I think this is helpful when students are reading the text. They are able to easily understand meanings of complex words and continue reading. Furthermore, with the social studies content-specific words, the students will need to have prior knowledge of World War I to fully comprehend the context of the text. Without this context, the students would not know some of the social studies specific words. If one were to teach this text, he or she would most likely do it during or after the social studies teacher teaches World War I to the students. Besides that prior knowledge, the students would not need as much scaffolding as the other article. Depending on the students' reading level, I believe that some students could be able to interact with this text on their own. However, others would need some supports to fully comprehend the text. Additionally, the students would need more time to read this text because it is relatively longer than the article.

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The syntax of the textbook is more difficult for students to comprehend than the article and website. The structure of the textbook is set up in a way, where students would have to interact with it multiple times to fully understand it. For example, within the text "Eleanor Roosevelt," there are numerous pictures throughout the text that at first glance may not seem important. However, the pictures are imperative because they help further the narrative with captions underneath them that explain who is in the pictures and what is going on in them. Some students might skip over these pictures because they think they are not important. Furthermore, going back to the vocabulary, there are words that are defined at the bottom of the page that some students might skip over because they do not see them. For these examples, it is crucial that as teachers, we teach our students the structure of the textbooks that we are going to use in our classrooms. This might seem like tedious work, but it will help our students to fully comprehend the text when they understand the structure of it.

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The discourse of the textbook is slightly different from the article because for the textbook, the discourse will focus more on oral discussion and written work. For example, at the end of each reading, there are short answer questions that the students can answer, if the teacher assigns them. With this, there is intentional written work involved in every reading, which is different from the article. For the article, the teacher would have to create questions for the students to answer. In this scenario, the teacher would decide to include a written section for the discourse of language arts. Furthermore, there is almost always oral discussions based on reading within the language arts discourse. Additionally, within the language arts discourse, there would be an assignment based on the vocabulary words used in the reading. This could be implemented through a traditional or non-traditional assessment. Either way, they assess the students on their knowledge of the vocabulary words in the reading, which is important in the language arts discourse.

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After analyzing these different texts, I saw several comparisons and contrasts between the two texts. On first look, it seems that they are more different from similar; however, there are some similarities between the two. Some comparisons between the two texts that I saw was how important it is to teach the vocabulary and syntax in texts. Even though the vocabulary levels of the two texts were on completely different levels, it is still extremely important to teach these to our students. As teachers, we need to remember to teach our students these words, so they can understand the text better. Especially, in the seventh grade language arts textbook, it is imperative that students have background knowledge on World War I, so they can fully understand the text. Another comparison between the two texts is the syntax of them. Even though one is a text and the other is a website, it is extremely important for students to learn the syntax of both texts. Both have syntax specific to the type of text. For example, for the website, the students need to know how to search it efficiently and know the ends and outs of the structure of it. Similarly to the website, students need to know the structure of the textbook, in order to fully understand it better. Students need to know where to look to help them define vocabulary words or know why they should examine the pictures. Again, even though these two texts are on completely different reading levels, it is incredibly important that we remember to teach our students these basic functions for the text.
Furthermore, I would say that there are more differences between the two texts, rather than similarities. The two texts are on completely different reading levels, and the librarian text would be incredibly hard for the students to read. The students would have to have a lot of scaffolding to completely understand it. Another contrast between the two texts is the complex vocabulary words in them. While students will need some background in World War I for the textbook, students would need a lot of background knowledge on the vocabulary words for the article (English Language Learners, multilingual, bilingual, etc.). Again, with this, students would need scaffolding to fully understand this vocabulary words. Additionally, with these two texts, students would need to learn the differences between the two discourses to fully understand it. One text is specifically meant for librarians and researchers in that discourse, while the other text is specifically meant for middle school students. They would need to learn why the discourses of the two texts are different and how that impacts the reading of the texts. This will be harder for students to understand; however, it is extremely important for the students to have a deeper understanding the texts.
Finally, I think the textbook could be beneficial for teachers to use within the language arts discourse. However, I would caution teachers to fully rely on the textbook for their instruction. While there are benefits for using the textbook for students, I do not think that it is totally an authentic text within the language arts discourse. I would argue that texts such as novels, poems, short stories, etc. are more authentic within the language arts discourse because they were written by people within this discourse. I feel like textbooks are not as authentic because they were forced to be written by certain companies. This could be another lesson for the students to analyze different texts within the language arts discourses - for example, textbooks vs. novels. Overall, I think it is important for students to interact with a wide range of texts within the language arts discourse, so they can become more fluent within this discourse. It is imperative as teachers that we give our students these opportunities to explore multiple texts, so they can be more well-rounded within our specific discourses.