Education Grant WinnerBonnie Garza

Learning a new language is always a challenge—especially for kids. On one side of the equation, you’re still trying to get down your primary tongue, and on the other you’re retaining different information associating to each language. For some kids, they don’t always have the resources they need to fully learn a new language.

Bonnie Garza, educator at LaCoste Elementary, wanted to give her bilingual students the chance to not only grow their skills and explore more books but develop a passion for reading in dual languages. Thanks to Power of the Dollar® members, she was awarded a $1,000 grant in December 2025 for her “Biliterate Library” project idea, which she then used the grant funds to purchase various sets of different-leveled readers in English and Spanish, bookbags, journals, binders, bookmarks, and more!

“The inspiration was basically not having authentic, colorful, pick-me-up books in Spanish,” said Garza. “A lot of my students don’t have books at home. I had just a few but they had already gone through them. So, they wanted something new; that’s where I had them make the selection. We went on the website, and I asked them ‘What books do you want?’ They helped me choose the books in English and in Spanish. From a parents perspective, it really has brought some of them together because they actually had something they could read together for ten minutes at night.”

At such a young age, it’s important to instill a certain engagement amongst your students to help maintain focus and drive to learn more. Practicing and reading daily is a must in order to continue to improve upon their fluency and overall knowledge. When you add books to a classroom—and one that provides a wide variety—it’s not just going to support their lack of selection, it’s going to encourage them to harness those skills. In Ms. Garza’s classroom, you’re seeing an improvement that wasn’t expected.

“From learning, they’ve built up their confidence, fluency, have gone from zero words to 25 words, and I’ve seen it from the principal and academic coaches’ point-of-view that our class has grown,” she said. “Academically, they’ve grown. At first, they didn’t want to pick up a book, and they actually prefer I read them a book then have it played on YouTube. Then I saw the kids were wanting to read more and more!”