I’ll never forget Sebastian. His hand piercing the classroom air as if his life depended on it.
He is six years old, gap-toothed, and sitting in a Santa Ana classroom. Many things can make a child smile, but when Sebastian heard Spanish spoken aloud in class for the first time, his heart leapt within his chest. For this little boy, he wasn’t answering a question. He just wanted to speak in a language that finally sounded like his home.
As I felt these powerful syllables erupt from my mouth, that moment clarified something for me. In Orange County, bilingualism is still treated as a niche concern, peripheral and spider-webbed. Yet, according to the California Department of Education, there are 77,765 English Learner students enrolled in Orange County. For these students, Spanish is the foundation to their ancestry and their sense of belonging. Nationally, more than one in ten students are English Learners (EL), mostly from Spanish-speaking households. In Orange County, those numbers concentrate in cities like Santa Ana, Anaheim and Garden Grove — cities whose sidewalks hum with a language our schools have spent decades trying to silence.
For the past four years, I’ve worked with the children at Title 1 school, El Sol Academy, nurturing student voices, learning from the existing bilingual curricula the school has implemented, and spreading my knowledge of bilingual education implementation across my county. Learning to cup my hand to my ear, pushing them to “habla mas fuerte”, speak louder, and “mira directamente”, look straight, within them murmured a language that had been stifled for too long. It was then that I realized that bilingualism isn’t just about language acquisition.
It’s about dignity.
It’s about standing on the shoulders of the “Chicano” Aztec Mexica giants.
It’s about reclaiming history: the exploitation of the Bracero Program in the 1940s, racial land covenant, the FBI’S Counterintelligence Program, and redlining.
It’s about celebrating our wins with the rise of Mendez vs. Westminster, which granted Hispanic youth equal access to schools. Every time my students open their small, prideful mouths, I witness a resurgence of confidence taking me back to the East LA Walkouts, where 15,000 to 22,000 Hispanic students rushed out of their classrooms, revolutionizing the Chicano civil rights movement and drawing national attention. Lady Liberty allegedly opened her arms, but for almost a century, the Chicano community were outsiders, segregated into barrios and dubbed “quiet fighters”.
I say all this because, regardless of the immense discrimination, our forefathers, Sal Castro, the Brown Berets, Ruben Salazar, Moctesuma Esperaza, and countless others fought for California to lead the nation in bilingual education. Yet the momentum of the 1968 Bilingual Education Act, which expanded bilingual education across California, was dealt a devastating blow in 1998 with the passage of Proposition 227. The act effectively scrubbed out the years of LaRaza, dismantling most bilingual programs and mandated English-only instruction.
What our administration didn’t understand is that for these English learners, it takes five to seven years to attain English fluency, a skill necessary to be successful in academic subjects. Instead, for nearly two decades, students were expected to learn complex subjects in a language they were still acquiring, raw, and stripped of their self-confidence. The classroom moved faster than they could keep up, furthering the existing socioeconomic disparities and high school drop out rates as students languished in English.
Finally, something changed. In 2016, voters approved Proposition 58, restoring local flexibility for bilingual education. Yet policy shifts couldn’t repair the 18 years of destroyed bilingual teacher pipelines and stigmatized culture. When COVID hit, plans for restoration through new dual-language programs were paused and online learning deepened teacher shortages and linguistic support for EL students.
That was 10 years ago. But in 2026, fear has now clawed its way into the homes of our Spanish-speaking families. Two weeks ago, one of my students told me that his aunt and one of his closest friends had been deported by ICE. In a world where his entire family stopped leaving their house except for essentials, this ten-year-old still showed up to class, rising above his own unimaginable pain to stand up for his neighborhood’s struggles.
His determination took root in my own chest, and I was determined to help this city in any way I could. In response to what I had seen in OC classrooms, I created Habla Arte, a bilingual Spanish-English K-6th program that combines visual arts and public speaking, while targeting EL and English-Second Language (ESL) students.
Over five years, Habla Arte has expanded across Santa Ana and other Orange County Title 1 schools. We’ve worked with more than 800 students, developed a bilingual app for our students in OC and a children’s book to reach families beyond the classroom.
The impact shows up quietly. Teachers have told us that students who once avoided speaking now readily volunteer to tell the story behind their artwork. Natali Castelan, an elementary school instructor, explains that “now the students have become more expressive and confident about themselves and their artworks, so now they really like to tell stories and now… they really like to free- draw and create characters and talk about it as a class.” We’ve realized that English-only education locks student culture outside the schoolhouse doors. Instead, bilingual education affirms learning while uplifting linguistic diversity at the same time.
Of course, Habla Arte isn’t a solution to every policy failure. Orange County still lacks enough bilingual teachers, enough curricula. Districts still struggle to implement programs even at parents’ request and the laws that permit it. But small interventions from the everyday people of OC can shift our county’s culture.
At the end of each session, my students shout “El Fin,” a proclamation of their bravery. Today, as I high five and first-bump the next year’s Kindergartners, I will always remember Sebastian, the boy who reminded me that bilingualism is not a relic or a political talking point. It’s a living creature alive in our neighborhoods, in the murmur of our community.
In Orange County, the question isn’t whether bilingualism belongs. Our children have already answered. And they are hungry for it.
Sailee Charlu is a high school student at the Orange County School of the Arts. Sailee has a deep interest in socio-cultural divides and educational equality. She founded a nonprofit charitable program called Habla Arte, a bilingual Spanish-English initiative that bridges language barriers, especially in ESL children, and combats cultural erosion through a curriculum centered on visual arts and public speaking. Over the past three years, this program has expanded throughout Santa Ana and Orange County Title 1 schools and outreach centers leading to the creation of the Habla Arte app and the publication of a bilingual children’s book, both funded by national grants.
Opinions expressed in community opinion pieces belong to the authors and not Voice of OC.
Voice of OC is interested in hearing different perspectives and voices. If you want to weigh in on this issue or others please email opinions@voiceofoc.org.