By Matthew McLaughlin

East Somerville Community School students, parents and faculty came together June 14 to celebrate the first 8th grade graduation of the Unidos program.

Unidos is a bilingual program that brought English and Spanish speaking homes together. The goal is to produce bilingual and biliterate students who are respectful of their own cultures and the cultures of others, according to their website. Students are taught half in their native language and the other half in a foreign language.

The Unidos program began nine years ago with one kindergarten class. The class was divided between children that spoke English as a primary language and students whose primary language was Spanish. Each year the program added a grade until there were classes all the way up to eighth grade. The first graduating class is representative of the success of the project, said Christine Henebury, a parent of one of 14 graduating students.

“Watching the camaraderie and genuine fondness the eighth grade Unidos students have for each other is wonderful,” she said. “As kindergarteners, these children and their parents took a chance on a brand new, untried experiment geared toward promoting bilingualism in Somerville.”

Although the students graduated from the program, Henebury said parents also learned.

“What happened was a lesson in biculturalism for us all,” she said. “Parents who might have never met grew to know each other through their children. The Unidos kids came from all corners of Somerville and most would never have met if they had opted for their neighborhood schools. They did meet, learned together and grew together sharing knowledge of not just their native languages, English and Spanish, but also their cultures. This merging of east and west, north, central and south is what Somerville is all about. The fact that these children now have the added gift of bilingualism turned out to be the icing on the cake; the true meaning of Unidos came through in the bonds that these diverse students are proving possible to us all.”