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Highline Public Schools wants all graduates to be bilingual and biliterate, and Farias and his class are part of that push.

I was enrolled in bilingual classes until second grade, and I credit this experience as the reason I am bilingual and biliterate today.

“I think the word that keeps coming up is additive. The ability for families to have options to be bilingual to be biliterate — it’s a skill I wish I had.”

Before the pandemic, my research focused on a biliterate brain in which children learned to read almost solely with print, while key cognitive skills like coding were learned on digital screens.

With much of the world working from home, and millions of students learning at home, developing a biliterate brain – one adapted to both digital and traditional print literacy – has never been more important.