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The Program:
¡Hola Baby! is a Spanish immersion program for babies, toddlers and young children. The goal is to have fun in Spanish at an early age and among friends! ¡Hola Baby! helps parents introduce Spanish to their child and/or reinforce the language with their child in a social setting. Parents with little to no Spanish language will |
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learn alongside their child, while parents who are fluent or native speakers will receive support in their effort to preserve the Spanish language in their home. Children will also learn that Spanish can be spoken with friends as well as with a parent or caretaker!
The program consists of eight-week sessions in the Fall, Winter and Spring. Each playgroup |
meets once a week for eight weeks. The “Nenes” playgroup (ages 1-2.5 years) meets for forty-five minutes and the “Chicos” playgroup (ages 2.5- 4 years) meets for one hour. The summer session is an abbreviated session (a mini camp), meeting more than once a week, and offers classes for the same ages.
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The Founder:
María Elena Giraldo Greene is a first generation American and grew up in a Spanish-speaking household with a Colombian father and a Puerto Rican mother. María began the Hola Baby program in June of 2005 after an unsuccessful search for a Spanish program for her eight month old daughter. For María, it was very important to keep her Latino culture and Spanish language alive in her family. She felt the earlier she immersed her daughter in Spanish the better chance her daughter had to learn the language in its essence. From the beginning, María dedicated herself to speaking only in Spanish with her daughter, but that was not enough. She also wanted her to experience the language in a social setting with peers. |
María believed that if her daughter engaged in Spanish at an early age and among friends she would be more likely to accept the Spanish language as part of her world. With her daughter as her inspiration, Hola Baby was born as a program enabling parents and their children to engage in the Spanish language together during the early years of language development.
Prior to Hola Baby and the birth of her daughter, María Elena Giraldo Greene was a communications specialist providing communications, public relations and marketing support to public and private sector clients. She worked primarily in education and health sectors and adapted many communications efforts to the Latino community. María also has direct teaching experience as an ESL teacher for immigrant children in grades 6, 7, and 8, and has been a Spanish tutor throughout her life for elementary and high school age children.
María has a BA from the University of Virginia and a Masters in Communications from American University.
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The Teachers:
There are currently three teachers for the Hola Baby program. The teachers are all Latinas and they are either native Spanish speakers or they are fluent Spanish speakers without an English accent because they were raised in a Spanish speaking household in the United States. Maria, the Founder, is the head teacher and goes by “Tía María” when teaching. Please see the bios for the other “Tías” below.
Marita Bustamante-Collins “Tía Marita” was born and raised in Peru. She is bilingual (Spanish/English) with a fair understanding of Portuguese. Marita moved to The United States with her husband almost 17 years ago to continue education and start a family. Marita and her husband’s desire to raise a multi-cultural, bilingual family motivated Marita to pursue one of the most important aspects of that goal: to develop and maintain her three year old son’s Spanish language skills. In the last few years, Marita has been dedicating her time not only to the enrichment of her son’s bilingual education, but also to networking and sharing resources with other bilingual parents for the common goal of raising bilingual children.
Marita started with Hola Baby in the Spring of 2006. Marita’s experience with children also includes two years of collaboration with an Early Learning Program for toddlers in Northern Virginia and Spanish tutoring. Additionally, when Marita visits her family in Peru, she participates in her family’s business, a Children’s School offering dance and music classes for toddlers.
Fllory Correa Dock “Tía Fllory” is a first-generation American Latina (from Ecuadorian parents) and has been speaking exclusively in Spanish with her bilingual children since they were born. Determined to ensuring that her children would flourish in Spanish as well as in English, she founded Amigas Vecinas, a resource group for families raising their children bilingually in Spanish. Fllory has worked as a management consultant at Verizon Communications, working on diversity, EEO, and organizational development issues with internal business clients. In addition to Hola Baby, Fllory also does Hispanic Outreach for Clarocode Company, LLC, an organization that assists small businesses in enhancing their business capabilities. Fllory has her BA from Cornell University and an International MBA from City University Business School of London.
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