Dear ,

You will see a lot of us this year (the meetings guarantee it), so we wanted the first contact to be this one: no request, no problem to solve, just a proper hello across what may be two languages, and a few things that will make the whole year work better for both sides of the table.

We know your position: more students than the ratios pretend, more paperwork than anyone admitted, and now a family whose meetings need an interpreter besides. We want to take that last weight off the table immediately: yes, we need an interpreter, and no, that is not a burden we are apologizing for. It is how our student gets a team that actually hears their parents’ full mind. In our language we can describe our child with a precision our English cannot reach. The interpreter is not for our benefit alone. It is for the plan’s.

So, the practical frame for the year: we request interpretation for every meeting, arranged through (the office / ourselves / our chosen person). We ask for the important documents, the draft IEP above all, in where possible, or early enough that we can have them read to us; we would rather sign late than sign unread, and we suspect you would rather we did too. Our student attends and speaks their prepared part in whichever language it comes best; sometimes the truest sentence arrives in the home language first, and we will bring its translation with us. And the one firm thing, said with a smile: our child is never the interpreter of their own IEP. They hold the student’s chair. We hold ours. The interpreter holds the bridge.

And about the paraeducator or behavioral tech beside our child: we know that chair. In this district it is often filled from our own community, sometimes already speaking our language, already translating hallway emergencies unofficially and unpaid while the official interpreter is being arranged. If that is true beside our child, we will thank them by name, in our language, in front of people. Either way, we ask that their knowledge (the minutes, the small weather no report holds) be invited into the meeting itself, on the agenda. A copy of this letter is folded in for them. We are told it may be the first mail that chair has received in a long while. Let ours be first of many.

What we know that the file cannot say, because the file was written in its own language about a child who lives in two: .

What you can count on: paperwork returned on time, even when it must be read to us first. Honor for your expertise, from a culture that does not give teachers’ honor lightly. Disagreement, when it comes, said plainly and early through the interpreter, never saved up, never sent sideways. And encouragement from afar, in writing, in two languages, sent to you and up your chain, because we have learned where written praise does a special educator the most good, and we intend to be fluent in that too.

Coffee at the first meeting. From our kitchen. We will bring enough for the interpreter.