On Hispanic heritage, language, and education: Una conversación con la Dra. Giselle Carpio-Williams

This Hispanic Heritage Month, I have the honor, with her permission, of sharing a window into a conversation with a dear colleague at HMH, Dr. Giselle Carpio-Williams. As Chief Equity and Inclusion Officer at HMH, it’s my mission to do all I can to ensure that every child academically thrives, envisioning possibilities, belonging, and success. And in her role as Vice President, Multilingual Advocacy & Content, Dr. Carpio-Williams has a similar mission, focusing with inspiring passion and wisdom on elevating multilingual learners. In other words, our work intersects in several ways, focusing on students, content, and customers.

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Benita: Dr. Carpio-Williams began her career as an educator and advocate for multilingual learners in a dual language school; she earned a doctorate in educational leadership with a research emphasis on multilingual learners; and in her current role, she channels her dedication to her mission and deep knowledge of educational trends into supporting success for all students. I have the privilege of working with Giselle and calling her my friend, and I hope that in her amazing story, you’ll see parts of your own story that lead you not only to a stronger appreciation of Hispanic Heritage Month, but perhaps also to a deeper understanding of your own life’s mission. 

“Yo estaba a cargo de las traducciones”

Benita: Getting to know you as I have, I have such admiration for you. Your story is so important. I love what you’ve done, knowing a bit of your story, what you’ve accomplished, and what it’s taken to get you here. Let’s talk a little about that to start. 

Giselle: First off, Benita, I think you’re trying to bring me to tears with that introduction. Oh my gosh, I’m honored that you think that of me! I’m a little speechless. And, you know, it takes a lot for me to be speechless! 

I am the first-generation daughter of refugees who arrived in NYC in the 1960s. They left Cuba with nothing but the clothes on their backs. My dad arrived as part of Operation Peter Pan, an exodus of unaccompanied minors sent by parents who feared the coming political regime at the time. He was 8 years old and traveled alone with his sister who was 12. My mom arrived when she was 15 years old with her parents and brother. They were given three days’ notice as to when they could leave their home. You had to leave with the clothes on your back. You couldn’t bring things of high value, so they hid their jewelry by sewing it into their coats so they wouldn’t have to leave their valuables behind. It’s so amazing to think about, right?

My parents immigrated to the U.S. separately, but they met years later while in high school in Brooklyn. They got married and had me and my sister. No one in the family really spoke English at that time, and so I started kindergarten not speaking much English. I always joke that I only spoke Sesame Street, The Price Is Right, and General Hospital English because that’s what was on TV. So, I had some of those words, but not full school-ready English.

Benita: What were elementary and middle schools like for you? Did you have help from your parents or any other supports?

Giselle: They had the typical immigrant mentality of work hard, be resourceful, and strive to succeed. As a first-generation kid, especially the oldest, there were certain pressures on me. I’m the first born of the family, the first of many, many cousins. My parents’ message to me was school was valuable and important. Work hard, get through, be resourceful. Oh, and always listen to what the teacher says! There was no option to not listen to the teacher. In Cuba, your teacher was an elevated member of the community, and that attitude towards teachers was transferred to me. The message was you give teachers the ultimate respect. Period.

My mom didn’t feel very comfortable going to school to see the teachers because she didn’t speak much English. So, helping me at home, she would enlist the help of friends, neighbors, cousins, in-laws.

I was in charge of translations, so I had two jobs, and the more English I learned, the more I had to tell them what was said so that they could communicate back to school.

My mom worked, so I was with grandma a lot. Abuela’s main focus was, “make sure you eat after school and do whatever it is they’re telling you to do at school. Take out your books, and do your work.”

So that’s what it was like. And the pressure of, “we didn’t come here to not be successful.” So that pressure was always in the background.

“Mi villa era nuestra comunidad Latina”

Benita: When I was a kid, my mom (a single parent) worked a lot, and my sisters and I were in an environment where our whole community was connected—we all came up and were raised together. Meaning, if my mom wasn’t at home after school, we went to Big Momma’s house, right? The whole community raised the kids. Everyone would need to be on your best behavior, that kind of thing, where we all had to lock arms. And there was safety in that for me. Did you have a similar situation?

Giselle: Yeah, the village of our community. Not necessarily the neighborhood, but the village of our Latino community. So they locked arms. It felt like we knew every Cuban in Brooklyn! And they knew us. And so, you know, it was like that in every neighborhood. And we knew how to take the bus from our neighborhood to the other neighborhoods where my abuela’s friends were. Cousins, abuela’s friends and neighbors from Cuba that were now here, we would be together all the time and get insights, like just navigating this American world where our language was different. This new place they were living in where our language wasn't always as welcomed.

So navigating life in different places of society could be a different experience for each person depending on their varying levels of English and their various shades of skin tone. And so, the treatment could be a little different depending on who in the family was interacting with society. That difference in treatment amplified a little further once the person spoke. Because then, once they spoke and accents were heard, regardless of how much English they knew, we were all put in the same category and treated as different. So, there was navigating that, too. 

As people started to get jobs in the community, the questions were, “So who do we know working at that school? Who’s working at the post office?” Then you get the hook up there, right? Within the community, they started working the jobs that would give insights on how to navigate this new normal, and then they started to know who to go to, or who to ask for, or who would know an answer to something they needed.

“Me di cuenta que este siempre había sido mi camino”

Giselle: That’s how my mom learned about the high school I went to. At the time, it was one of only three specialized high schools in NYC, and you had to test to get in. She found out about it through her community network, and so I had to take the test. I had no choice. That’s how they viewed education. Quality education as the pathway that led forward and up, up, and out. I’m like, OK, I guess I gotta take this test.

I passed the test and got into Brooklyn Tech. I got in, and it was not even an option to not go to Brooklyn Tech. Through all my elementary and middle school years, I had attended my local neighborhood schools. I really wanted to go to my neighborhood high school with my friends. But this time, I had no choice. My mom said, “no, you got in, you're going.” It was an hour-long train ride from where I lived, and I had to go.

Looking back, going to that school totally changed the trajectory of my life.

Benita: So here’s the parallel here: to attend Detroit’s premier college preparatory high school at the time, you had to test in. I wanted to go to my local high school, and my favorite middle school teacher said, “No, you're going to take this test, and you're going to Cass Tech.” Hundreds of students from across the city of Detroit apply, and I get in and I go. I must take at least two, sometimes three buses to get to that school every single day, and I have to get up at 5:00 a.m. to get there by 6:30 a.m. Every single day.

Giselle: Yeah, same.

Benita: Right? So, you don’t let yourself, your teachers, your community down, right? You focus, you dig in . . . keep going, dig in, lean in. College prep high school means select a course of study, so I majored in chem/bio pre-med. It was hard work. And I kept on the path even as it was different from others who attended the local high school. Your route and trajectory starts to look different from those around you when you come home every day. Was that your experience? 

Giselle: Oh my gosh, it’s like the same exact story! I didn’t know our stories were so identical! I started as biomedical engineering, and then I switched to pre-med but then ultimately realized that wasn’t my path either. When I looked around at my peers that had decided to attend the local high schools, I really started to notice how my trajectory had changed significantly.

I was the first-generation, first English-speaking, oldest child, oldest grandchild, oldest cousin, oldest niece, oldest everything. Anyone who’s lived that life, you know that you’re essentially the teacher to all the younger siblings, cousins, family, etc. So teaching was in my blood. I can do this naturally. Teaching just comes to me. I’ve always been the helper, that kind of unofficial teacher. So, I realized maybe teaching is my thing. And once I started, it was like, “oh my gosh, this is totally what I should have been doing all along.” And it just progressed from there. I embraced it and ran with it.

“Soy quien soy porque hablo español”

Giselle: And when I became a mom, I became even more driven. I was thinking about how impactful my grandmother was to my life and how impactful I wanted my mother to be to my son’s life, and I was also very conscious of the fact that I am who I am because I speak Spanish. So, I wanted my son to have that experience. My husband didn’t speak Spanish, but I wanted my son to, so I immersed him with my mom. And so, for the first two years of his life, my son did not speak English either. That was something that was really important to me.

And then as I started to move into my educational career, I said, this is what I want to do. I want to make sure that all kids who are like me, like my children, are able to embrace their heritage language, even if it’s not the language of the country they were born in. Our language and our culture are so intertwined in the Latino community. Culture and language are not separate. There are Latinos who don’t speak Spanish, and that’s OK. There are still things that are culturally relevant that are in our language, which are so intertwined. I wanted to make sure I made a difference in children experiencing that joy and beauty that is our language and culture.

So, then I just took off with my educational career. I became a dual language teacher in Brooklyn near where I went to school. I taught elementary school where 95% of the students in my classroom were either immigrants or first-gen kids just like me. I strived for my students to be able to see themselves in me. Their parents would come to the school because I did speak Spanish, and my parent-teacher conferences were in Spanish, so my parent engagement was there. I started pursuing my higher education and eventually earned my doctorate in educational leadership with a focus on multilingual learners. 

“Reuniendo a todos”

Benita: So, what do you tell your family about Hispanic Heritage Month? Why is it important to you, and important to celebrate?

Giselle: It’s a little double edged because this is our culture 24/7, not just mid-September to mid-October. I tell my sons and everybody I speak to about it that it’s our opportunity to gather as a community and learn about each other. Although we are very united language-wise, our cultures are not a monolith. We have very different cultures. It’s a time to learn about all the different Latinos, all the different Hispanics in America and in the world. And to amplify the things that maybe the general public doesn’t know. It's our time to shine.

We live this world. We breathe it every day. It’s what we cook. It's what we eat. It’s what we talk. It’s what we have, our culture, even the way we speak to the point where sometimes my kids will say that I’m yelling when I speak, and I say, “I'm not yelling; that’s the way we talk,” you know? It’s hard because you want the month as a celebration and as an acknowledgement, but you also want it to be just about us and part of our normal day-to-day. This is us, and this is who and how we are. Can we just be us all year long, right? So, you appreciate the highlight, but then you also feel like it should just be naturally ingrained that we are interwoven as part of this country.

I tell my sons it’s important to keep our language because in the society we’re growing up in now, our language is becoming even more important. It’s becoming more understood in America, which is one of the few monolingual countries in the world. It’s now actually the power of the Latino culture and Latino presence that’s creating an environment for the potential of America becoming a bilingual country in the very near future. That’s exciting to witness! So, I tell my sons that knowing the language gives them leverage. Speaking the language of their heritage gives them opportunities.

Benita: Can you talk a bit about how you've helped build community here at HMH with the UNIDOS ERG [employee resource group], and about what UNIDOS has meant to you?

Giselle: Yes, UNIDOS was built with the idea to extend what we do at home to work, and so that community building is what UNIDOS was founded on. We wanted to create a place where people could self-identify and meet. When my parents came to this country, their focus was on integrating—that whole melting pot idea. You come in and melt and disappear from your old world and melt into this new world. That’s not the way we are now. We have a lot of pride in our heritage. Our parents had pride too, but it was an inner circle community. Now, pride is more vocal and more like putting it out there where everybody should understand our culture and see we care about our culture. We want to keep our culture, and we want everybody else to know about it and celebrate it, too.

So UNIDOS was about just bringing us all together, a safe space encouraging the use of our language. Let’s do it celebrating our food, our culture, our diversity, even the ugly parts of our culture too, in a safe space where we feel comfortable. That’s been successful and created a network of individuals that we always know we can reach out to. I can’t tell you how many times somebody has said I’m reaching out because we connected through UNIDOS. I love it.

Benita: In addition to UNIDOS, what else are we getting right at HMH in support of multilingual learners?

Giselle: I have been able to leverage my passion and my work experience to create this new lane, which is the multilingual advocacy work that I’m doing now in my vice president role. This role didn’t exist, and the intention is to make sure that we’re advocating across the organization for multilingual learners. So just the fact that it exists, and that multilingual advocacy has been given the space to grow and evolve is something that we’re definitely doing right at HMH. We’re prioritizing the importance of multilingual learners, language scaffolding, and language support. Multilingual learners are part of our communities both in HMH and in the schools that we support.

In the last three to four years, we’ve gone from just basic multilingual resources to a whole host of intricate supports across all our resources. That’s something that’s really evolved, and now in my work I am able to intersect with pretty much every department in the organization. So, I’m able to make sure that multilingual learner needs are considered in every function we’re working on in the organization. It’s becoming a more visible component at HMH. It’s something that everybody talks about. It’s not just some people. Everybody understands how important it is to elevate multilingual learners. 

Benita: Thank you, Giselle, for sharing your story and why this work is so important to you.

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I hope through Giselle’s story you’ve gained insights into your own story and life’s work. Hispanic Heritage Month is a time for celebrating one’s culture and for building and maintaining safe spaces and community, and so much more! The importance can’t be overstated, especially in times where the need for familia can be essential in everyday societal ups and downs. People with common identities crave the support of one another and their allies—and this support is an essential impact of our employee resource groups, or ERGs, at HMH. It is also one of many reasons I am extremely proud to be the strategic advisor to all nine of our ERGs.

At HMH we believe learning can transform lives and lift up communities—every community, everywhere, all year round. We are proud of our ability to partner with educators so that the students we serve with HMH solutions—in 90% of U.S. K–12 schools and 50 million students across 150 countries—can reach their full potential. We are an adaptive learning company on a mission to help educators create growth for every student. What could be more important than that?

Dr. Giselle Carpio-Williams is the vice president of multilingual advocacy and content at HMH. She has previously written an article for us on the role of technology for ELL students.