January 2026 • Issue 99 • California Association for Bilingual Education

Upcoming CABE Dates and Deadlines in this Issue...

• January 7—Extended Submission Deadline for CABTE Graduate Student Research Symposium at CABE 2026
• January 20—Free community schools webinar series—Session 2: Equity in Action: Inquiry-Driven Strategies for Justice and Access
• January 21—Early Bird registration deadline for CABE 2026
• January 27—Free webinar for members intending to apply for 2026 CABE Board election
• February 2—Community Schools One-Day Conference Supporting Monterey
• February 10 & 12—Cross-linguistic Transfer and Translanguaging—Session 1 of Translanguaging, Transfer, and Teaching Excellence for Biliteracy Series

CABE Legislative Advocate Report

by Jennifer Baker

• Holiday Break
• Legislative Calendar

CABE 2026 Artwork by Dr. Christian Faltis

CABE is excited to feature the artwork of Dr. Christian Faltis at the CABE 2026 annual conference in San Francisco, March 4-7, 2026.  The middle child of three siblings, Chris was born in Woodland, California, to a multilingual Bohemian Czech father and a Scottish mother who met at the University of New Mexico, where his mother studied art, and his father studied languages. His father taught Spanish, French, and Russian, and when Chris was five years old, he and his brother and sister were sent to a Mexican colegio in Morelia for 3 months. He and his brother went to a colegio in Mexico City for 2 years, and then to a colegio in Hermosillo, Sonora, for two years, As internados, they lived in the dorms, and he says, “Because we were the only gringos there, we learned the language fast! My nickname was “Cristino El Güero.” At the age of ten, he returned to the States only to be enrolled in all lower-level classes because by that time, he was more proficient in Spanish than in English.

After graduating from Woodland High School, he went to Sierra College in Rocklin, CA, where he majored in Spanish. Later, he transferred to San Francisco State, where he earned a B.A. in Spanish with a minor in La Raza Studies. He completed his M.A. in Mexican American Graduate Studies at San José State, after which he moved to Medellín, Colombia for a year to teach English in a K-12 language institute He then pursued a Ph.D. in Bilingual Cross-cultural Education and a second M.A. in Second Language Education at Stanford University. After working as a professor of language education at the University of Alabama, he received a Fulbright scholarship to set up a B.A. in English as a Foreign Language Program at the Universidad Nacional de Honduras. Upon returning to the States again, he became an associate professor of bilingual education at the University of Nevada, Reno. His career’s pathway was then guided by a series a recruitments to Arizona State (Professor of Bilingual Education for 18 years), UC Davis (first UC Endowed Chair in Teacher Education for 8 years), Ohio State (Department Chair of Teaching and Learning), and finally, at Texas A & M International University or “TAMIU” in Laredo, where he prepares bilingual teachers. Chris is an AERA Fellow and an AERA Distinguished Scholar.

Chris says that he was always good at art, “My mother was an art teacher and my father an artist and musician.” While in high school, he went to art school in San Francisco over the summer. He stopped doing art as a sophomore in high school to become the drummer in a rock-and-roll band. Many years later, in 2005, his son sent him an oil painting kit, which re-ignited his artistic, creative pathway. While on vacation in Oaxaca, he took lessons with an artist named Isis Rodríguez, whose art focused on indigenous topics. He returned five more times for lessons and even followed her when she moved to San Miguel de Allende to continue taking art classes. “She taught me so much about oil painting human figures (indigenous models), color theory, and portrait painting." Chris has exhibited his art at universities and has given keynote speeches about his art at Purdue, UC Davis, and the University of Georgia. In 2014-15, he took a year’s sabbatical from UC Davis to teach English and research at the University of Guadalajara and to attend an art university there, taking more painting and art theory classes.

Art has always been a passion, not a vocation, for Chris. He explains, “I’ve never sold my art. Instead, I give it away.” An author with Multilingual Matters asked the publisher if Chris could do a book cover for them, and to date, he has created the artwork for 15 book covers at various publishers. The CABE 2026 artwork was created by Dr. Christian Faltis for the cover of the book, Multilingual Perspectives on Translanguaging, edited by Jeff MacSwan and published by Multilingual Matters in 2022. Chris explains the intention and meaning of the artwork below:

As many viewers have noticed in my artworkaabout translanguaging, I painted a beaded curtain over the S on LANGUAGES. The people in the artwork represent dynamic speakers of multiple named languages. The idea here is that named languages are typically envisioned as separate, monoglossic entities, but from a heteroglossic, dynamic bilingual perspective, each individual may use two named languages in communication with other bilinguals who share their languaging practices. Accordingly, their bilingualism is one language. It is the dominant monolingual discourse that conveys languages are separate, and that using one’s bilingual repertoire without separating the two languages supports impure and imperfect language use, which, to me, is unjust and simply wrong.

Flo McClelland, the marketing manager at Channel View Publications Ltd / Multilingual Matters, says, “Since working with him on his very first book with Multilingual Matters back in 1990, Language Distribution Issues in Bilingual Schooling, it's been clear to us that Chris has been an important and enthusiastic supporter of bilingual and multilingual students worldwide. In recent years, we've really enjoyed working with him to turn our authors’ concepts and ideas into some of the most striking and meaningful covers in our list. We’re so pleased that his talent has been recognized and championed by CABE!” While at UC Davis in the early 2000s, Chris attended his first of four CABE conferences and describes it as a fantastic experience.

Books with cover art by Dr. Faltis and published by Multilingual Matters...

Dr. Faltis has two grown children who were raised bilingually in Spanish and English: Jessica (49), a paralegal in Dallas, and Antonín (46), a chief accountant for an alternative energy company in Scottsdale. In his free time, Chris enjoys creating art, especially with his six grandkids, playing with his five cats, reading novels, and traveling in Mexico and worldwide. Chris is proud to claim that his family represents four generations of Spanish speakers. He looks forward to attending CABE 2026 and would like to remind the CABE community that “We have to keep pushing for bilingual education, and biliteracy, in particular, because biliteracy opens us up to so many new ideas in the world. If we only focus on oral language, we risk losing it within a generation.”

You can read more about Dr. Christian Faltis at https://cabe2026.org/artwork/ on the CABE 2026 website.

Editor’s Note: When I was the Lead Coordinator of the WRITE Institute (now Writing Redesigned for Innovative Teaching and Equity—WRITE) at the San Diego County Office of Education, I had the honor of meeting Dr. Chris Faltis for the first time in the early 2000s. He was a co-principal investigator at UC Davis with Dr. Eric Haas of WestEd on an Institute of Education Sciences (IES) research grant that was studying the impact of WRITE on teacher efficacy. Dr. Faltis told me during this interview that the WRITE study was the largest one he had ever been a part of. I was delighted to learn that his art had been selected as the CABE 2026 conference artwork, especially in light of the fact that WRITE is now celebrating its 35th anniversary!

—Laurie Miles, Editor of CABE Corner newsletter and CABE Communications Manager

📣 Join the Center for Equity for English Learners (CEEL) at Loyola Marymount University on Saturday, February 7, 2026 for the annual Jornada Conference — a celebration of bilingual education, collaboration, and culturally sustaining pedagogy! 🌍📚

📌Register Here: https://lmutpg.lmu.edu/C20995_ustores/web/product_detail.jsp?PRODUCTID=1288&SINGLESTORE=true

Strengthen Family Partnerships in Today’s Classrooms

Building meaningful partnerships with families is one of the most powerful ways to help students thrive — but it can feel harder than ever.

SEAL’s Building Stronger Multilingual Family Partnerships webinar series gives teachers and school teams hands-on tools to strengthen trust, communication, and collaboration with families across languages and cultures.

💻 Virtual | Jan. 8, 15 & 22, 2025 | $125



🔗 [Register Now]

Contact the editor: Laurie Miles, Communications Manager, laurie@gocabe.org