AGC Blog

Originally published on Borderless Magazine

Languages and linguistics fascinated Berenice Salas from a young age. Growing up with her immigrant parents in Little Village, many of her core memories revolved around language.

At home, she translated Spanish to English for her dad so he could communicate with his boss. She assisted her mom, a bilingual teacher, in the classroom.

Berenice drew from those early experiences to become a teacher before leading the Academy for Global Citizenship (AGC), a charter school focused on dual language education, global awareness and sustainability. The school is located in Garfield Ridge, a neighborhood about five miles from where she grew up on Chicago’s Southwest Side.

“I grew up in the community,” Berenice said. “I still live right here. I’m from the area, so for me, it was always a dream to be here.”

Identity and ‘Inglés Sin Barreras’

Thousands of miles from Mexico, Berenice’s parents kept their native language and heritage alive in their Little Village family home.

Her father, Jorge Salas, immigrated to Chicago from Durango, Mexico, with hardly a dime. He picked up English by listening to The Beatles cassettes, practicing at work and attending local English classes, where he eventually met Berenice’s mom, Yasmin Badillo.

Badillo, who arrived from Veracruz, Mexico with some English skills, later became involved in Berenice’s school and pursued a career as a bilingual teacher.

Berenice was born and raised in Chicago, but throughout her childhood, she spent summers cultivating land alongside her father on his farm in Mexico. Her curiosity about language and different ways of living deepened as she learned about Spanish dialects.

Back home in Little Village, Berenice’s everyday life echoed Mexico: the stores stocked with Hispanic food products, the Spanish masses at the local church and the many people from Mexico, too. Berenice said it was easy to stay connected with her heritage.

“We’d go walking down the block, and you go to the supermercado [grocery store], and you buy pingüinos [chocolate snack cakes] and Pan Bimbo [a brand of white sandwich bread],” she said. “You didn’t find Miracle Whip. You found mayonesa con limón [mayonnaise with lime].”

Education was another priority for her family.

“My mom would always say, ‘Nobody can take that degree away from you,’” Berenice remembered.

And it showed up in more ways than one in Berenice’s life.

Her grandma lived down the street, and Berenice would sit next to her to help with her English pronunciation as she studied from Inglés Sin Barreras, a popular English-learning kit for Spanish speakers in the 2000s.

Berenice often gravitated towards helping children, reading to them, entertaining them or offering to babysit. Language and education were constants in her life, and she credits her family with nurturing both.

To Berenice’s parents, she was destined to become a teacher.

Bringing culture to the classroom

Berenice initially became a teacher by accident. After the social work program she was in was cut during her junior year at the University of Illinois Chicago, she transferred to the school of education.

“Eventually it was where my heart was and where it lived,” Berenice said.

She became a teacher for Chicago Public Schools, where she taught for a few years. A friend working at AGC encouraged her to apply for a teaching position, so she visited the school.

She remembers seeing students learning and playing outdoors, chickens roaming the parking lot, compost bins and garden beds. She heard students and teachers speaking both English and Spanish.

“You got a sense of like, happiness,” Berenice said. “It pulled me in.”

She applied and became a teacher at AGC for nine years.

Now, she welcomes families into the school on their first day as a principal at AGC.

Just hours after dropping her daughter off at college in Wisconsin, Berenice stood at the front doors of AGC in August, greeting families with a smile.

“Good morning. ¡Buenos días!” she said, welcoming students and parents into the Cultivate Hub building.

The school opened in 2008 and is currently located on the Southwest Side, a predominantly Hispanic, immigrant and Spanish-speaking area.

AGC is a dual language immersion and International Baccalaureate (IB) school with more than 550 students enrolled from pre-kindergarten to eighth grade. Its hall signage appears in Spanish and English, often Spanish first.

For Berenice, the school became a way for her to help others connect with their heritage by encouraging them to embrace their native language or learn Spanish, even if they weren’t native speakers. For many children of immigrants, maintaining their native language and culture can be a struggle if it isn’t embraced in their communities and schools, she said.

Berenice’s support influenced parents like Talisa Guerrero, who saw the school as a way to help her children practice more Spanish, their native language. Berenice made a lasting impact on her eldest daughter, who is now in high school and still visits the school to see her, Guerrero said.

Berenice said that recently, AGC has enrolled more students who have recently arrived from Central America. For her, this underscores the importance of the school’s dual language model.

“This is where the dual language program is so powerful, because already they’re entering a space, a community that says, ‘We value language, your home language, your mother tongue is valued here,’” Berenice said.

This year, Berenice notes that there’s another layer of worry over her: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) targeting immigrant families, schools and community spaces. The school developed a plan in case agents appear, she said.

“For our school, what’s been challenging hasn’t been the building, or the transition or the philosophy,” said Berenice. “It’s been more like the climate of society right now is helping ensure that everybody still feels emotionally safe.”

A cultivation of resilience amid uncertainty

Despite the challenges, Berenice says she stays grounded in the school’s mission.

Sustainability is a key part of that mission she carries into her home.

After outgrowing a church room, a former dental tool factory, and a vacant CPS building, the school now operates in a fossil fuel–free building complete with a greenhouse, solar panels and an Esperanza Health clinic.

Berenice added that the school’s location on the Southwest Side is especially notable because it is in a part of Chicago that experiences some of the highest levels of toxic air pollution and other environmental health hazards.

This challenge is not a topic they shy away from teaching in class, Berenice says. Students learn about pollution, reducing waste and gardening.

These lessons are deeply personal, she said. They remind her of when she was younger, visiting her dad’s farm in Mexico, learning about cultivating land, watching her relatives hang-dry clothes and seeing her parents reuse food containers.

Berenice now has a family of her own with her husband. They have four children, all of whom have been or are students at AGC.

She lives out these values of sustainability and bilingualism at home with them, speaking both languages, going camping regularly and eating plant-based meals whenever possible.

Her role as the daughter of immigrants in Little Village and now as a mom shapes how she leads the school.

“We are not just building a school,” said Berenice. ”We’re thinking about our own children, too, and other people’s children that way.”

Learn more about AGC's Dual Language learning model and shared leadership approach.