Emergent Bilinguals with
Visual Impairments: Guidelines for
Instruction
Madeline Milian, Ed.D.
University of Northern Colorado
madeline.milian@unco.edu
"We thought Camilo was learning enough English
to go to college, but he has not been able to do
well on the standardized tests. We never taught
him how to read Spanish because we thought he
would get confused; now he may not know English well enough for college and he does not know
how to read Spanish either" (Camilo's Mother).
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A few years ago, I was having a conversation with Camilo's mother, Estrella, who was reflecting on her son's education in the United
States. Her two children had received their entire
K-12 educations in the United States. At the time,
Camilo, who is blind, was in the 11th grade and
Lourdes was in the 9th grade." Her two children,
Camilo, who is blind, and was then in 11th grade,
and Lourdes who was then in 9th grade, had received their entire K-12 education in the United
States. She was examining the positive and
negative aspects of educating her children outside their native country and in a language that
was new to them. Estrella and her husband,
Roberto, came to the United States from Mexico
with their children after they realized that the services available for young blind children in their
community back home were not adequate to
meet Camilo's future educational needs. At the
time of their arrival, Camilo was 3 years old and I
met them when he enrolled in a local early intervention program. Since then, I have been in contact with the family and have learned much from
