GREEN BAY (NBC26) — A legend that goes beyond it's pages. A local parent on a mission to help families overcome language barriers through traditional Hispanic stories.
- The video
- shows a local parent sharing his story, La Leyenda de la Momia del Ojo Verde, to a room of eager first graders at St. Thomas More School.
- Rudy Hernandez wrote the book in response to the challenges that his family and many others face in finding bilingual content for children.
- Efforts to implement bilingual content in education are being led by staff members at the school.
- Hernandez says bridging the gap between language barriers has shown positive results in the classroom.
- The book is available for purchase— Rudy invites more people to write stories and share Hispanic culture across the region.
(The following is a transcription of the full broadcast story)
It's reading time for 1st graders at St. Thomas More School
and campus minister and teacher, Rudy Hernandez, is sharing a unique story.
"This is an opportunity to learn more about the culture and build bridges," Rudy said.
It's called La Leyenda de la Momia del Ojo Verde or The Legend of the Green-Eyed Mummy and it's a book he wrote.
"This is a story about inner strength," Rudy said.
Inspired by Mexican folktales, Rudy said the book is serving a bigger purpose.
"The need for Spanish literature," Rudy said. "(The students) don't see themselves in the book and I think it's important to do more Spanish literature so they can see themselves in it."
As a parent of young children, Rudy says he and his wife Ruby Hernandez, a Spanish content teacher at the school, want their children to speak English and Spanish, but finding resources has been difficult — A challenge, they said, that many families face.
"There's a lack of Spanish in the community and there's a need," Ruby said. "So we're looking to push out more Spanish literacy and the content that the kids can relate to, that parents can read to them and they can have that one-on-one conversation."
"It's very limited and a lot of that material is translated and when you look at it, it's not even translated properly," Rudy said.
So Rudy wrote a book to help his children and many others experience learning in English and Spanish.
Rudy says he, too, endured the challenges of learning English after moving to Green Bay.
Now he's spreading the book and the message of Hispanic inclusion in education across the city.
"You can't translate culture," Rudy said. "That's just something you have to experience and Spanish literature is your gateway to it."
The bilingual book is now available for purchase online.
Rudy says his vision is to expand bilingual resources and inspire more authors to create stories and share Hispanic culture.
