A Message of Hope and Responsibility
Through fluid poetry and stunning imagery, Francisca Sánchez and her son Nicolás Gabriel Sánchez created a message of hope and responsibility with When I Dream / Cuando Sueño. The book opens with the narrator’s foresight and intention to teach while nature is treated as this wondrous force meant to be respected and engaged with as an endless source of inspiration. Thematic focal points include leadership, ambition, time and generational impacts and the method of delivery soothed minds stimulated by literary and visual art.
Francisca’s elegant and delicate language created new ways of viewing day, night and all that can be seen in between. Her words strung together the art by her son Nicolás whose strokes and bold colors depicted gorgeous beings in their natural habitats. The narrator’s experience of dreaming is synonymous with teaching, which gives readers a valuable dual language classroom experience.
Francisca was once an English language learner who has since soared to make tremendous impacts in literary arts and education. She started in education as a high school teacher but has evolved as an esteemed leader among school districts, California Association for Bilingual Education (CABE), and Provocative Practice™. Her son, named after Nicolás Guillén and Gabriel García Márquez, is an artist and interior designer whose leadership mirrors his mother’s passion for creativity and social consciousness. This was their first partnership in publishing and we hope it will not be the last.
Author: Sandra Mercuri
Dr. Mercuri is a nationally and internationally recognized educational consultant in the area of second language acquisition, dual language education, and curriculum integration for biliteracy development. She has over 28 years of experience in teaching in K-12 schools and at the university level in Argentina and the United States. After retiring as a professor from the University of Texas System, she continued to work on research on the development of academic language across the content areas, the use of translanguaging practices for language transfer, and the effect of long-term professional development on dual language, bilingual and ESL teachers’ instructional practices. Dr. Mercuri provides professional development for teachers and administrators as well as for parents. She presents at national and international conferences on issues of second language acquisition and bilingualism, dual language education, translanguaging pedagogy, and ESL strategies. Dr. Mercuri has published articles in the TESOL Quarterly, Talking Points, EJLTS, JMER, TESOL Connections, MEXTESOL, and the NABE journal as well as the Spanish professional journals The Colombian Journal of Bilingual Education: GIST and the Revista Educación y Pedagogía and more than twelve book chapters. Dr. Mercuri is the author of the book titled Supporting Literacy Through Science: The Challenge of Teaching...