Sold a Story - Introducing: Sold a Story en español

Episode Date: March 19, 2024

A Spanish adaptation of Sold a Story is now available. Hosted by journalist Valeria Fernández, the podcast is condensed into one 58-minute episode, plus a conversation between Fernández and Emily Hanford for Spanish-speaking parents whose children are learning to read English in American schools. - Listen or share: Sold a Story en español - Learn more: soldastory.es

Hey, it's Emily. I'm here to tell you about a couple of things. First, we have new episodes coming. It's been more than a year since Sold a Story came out, and a lot has happened to the people we focused on. It's just like watching one of those like statues being pulled down from the cold war. And the company too. So what I'm looking at here is a graph that shows since

Soul to Story came out, sales have really graded. In 2019 they were almost off the chart and now it's just barely a blip. We're also going to get updates from some of the teachers and parents you met in the podcast and kids. And how is fourth grade going so far? It's going pretty amazing. And how is fourth grade going so far? It's going pretty amazing. The other thing I want to tell you is that we have adapted and translated a one-hour version of Sol de Story into Spanish. And there's someone I want you to meet. Her name is Valeria Fernandez.

Hi, Emily. Hi, Valeria. Valeria is a journalist based in Phoenix, and she is the host of Sold a Story and Español. I'm excited about this project. I really want Spanish speakers in the United States, especially parents, to hear the Sold a Story in Español. So if you know parents, educators, or know people that will be interested in the topic and speak Spanish, please invite them to check the podcast. You can find the podcast by searching for Sol de Story en Espanol,

and we will have a link in our show notes that you can share with people. So we have Valeria here. Tell us a little bit about yourself, Valeria. I am an independent investigative journalist based in Arizona, originally from Uruguay, and I reported on immigration, issues of social justice, and also bilingual education. Now I'm also a mom, and I have a four year old kid who is about to start school. So I'm really interested in seeing how schools are teaching how to read. I think it's really important to make the right choice, especially now that I'm

familiar with the findings and investigation of Sola's story, understanding that reading is really the foundation for the rest of the education of my kid, and that he faces the special challenges being a kid that speaks Spanish at home and will be learning how to read English at school. Yeah, you know, parents know that. I think they know that reading is important. They assume that when they send their kids to school, they'll be taught how to read. And I think that's what's been

so shocking for many parents to recognize and hearing sold a story that that is not necessarily the case. And that's really why we wanted to translate it into Spanish. It was much harder and it took much longer than we thought it would. No one on our core team speaks Spanish. And, you know, we have little arguments and debates about the particular word that we choose in English as we're going through and editing scripts. And it was fascinating to sort of turn this over and to watch the various Spanish-speaking journalists

and translators involved in arguing over exactly the right words to use. Yes, I mean, translating is always a challenge, right? Because in Spanish you may have more choices of words. And also we had another element here that is like how English is thought, how Spanish is thought, the difference in the language itself. Like Spanish is a much easier language to learn to read than English. You don't have, you know, all these silent letters. Oh, there's only the H. So in English, it's a whole different ball game. Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, I've always thought that one of the reasons there's been so much argument in the United States about how to teach kids to read is because it turns out that English is one of the most difficult languages to learn, right? It takes two or three years for like a typically developing kid to learn the basics of written English, whereas if a kid gets some good instruction in Spanish,

it usually takes only about a year or so to teach them how to decode the Spanish language. But it's important to have a podcast in Spanish talking about English in the context of the United States, because that's where kids are going to be taught. You have lots and lots of kids who are speaking Spanish at home, but learning to read English in school. And I think parents really need to understand some things about what it takes to learn the English language and what schools are not doing in terms of teaching that really well to their children who need to learn how to speak English and read English. Yeah, that's why in addition to condensing and translating Soldier Story into Spanish,

we also make a second episode where you and I really talk about those special challenges for kids that speak Spanish at home but are learning English at school, which is going to be exactly the case of my son. And so I think I found that episode super helpful and I think other parents will too. Yeah, we have that. And we also translated into Spanish several in-depth articles that we've written about how reading is taught in American schools, how it's tested. We have those in translation so they can be read in Spanish.

And I also put together a list of Spanish language resources for parents who might be worried that their children are struggling with learning how to read, and it has some tips and advice and things you can do. You can find all of that at soldastory.es. That's soldastory, all one word, dot E-S, and there is a link to that in the show notes. Lots of really good information there for parents to check out. So thank you very much, Valeria, for doing this. It was so exciting to have someone else be a host of Sold a Story.

It was really fun working with you and your team on this project. I really enjoyed it, Emily, and I think this is going to be extremely helpful to a lot of parents and families out there. It's an incredibly important story. Thanks Valeria. Thank you, Emily. Sold a Story in Spanish is available now. Search for it in your podcast app or just click the link in the show notes.

And please spread the word with the Spanish-speaking people in your life, especially parents. And keep an eye out for the new episodes of Sold a Story in English. We'll be dropping those episodes soon. You can sign up for alerts at our website soldastory.org. Scroll down to where it says email notifications. Thanks for listening. We'll be back soon.