Habla Arte: Bilingual Arts Practices that Legitimize Multilingual Voices in School (2022-2026)
University of California, Irvine, School of Education — Sailee Charlu, Reinaldo Cabrera Pérez, and Dr. Elizabeth D. Peña
This year-long study followed 45 Spanish-English bilingual students (grades K–5) across two Southern California schools to test whether Habla Arte’s arts-integrated curriculum could reshape students’ belief that Spanish belongs in academic spaces. Composite scores rose from 2.38 to 4.17 on a five-point scale (p < .001), with 92% of students showing increased communicative confidence and 100% presenting their work publicly; teachers independently reported parallel gains. The findings suggest that pairing visual arts with structured public speaking helps students externalize ideas in Spanish before articulating them aloud — turning Spanish from a merely permitted language into an authoritative one.
Publication: Charlu, S., Cabrera Pérez, R., & Peña, E. D. (2026). Habla Arte: Bilingual Arts Practices that Legitimize Multilingual Voices in School. Education Role of Language (ERL) International Journal. [Publication date: August 2026]
Our founder was selected to present her Habla Arte findings within the Graduate Research Symposium strand of CABE’s flagship annual conference in San Francisco , the largest multilingual education conference in the world, drawing more than 7,000+ educators, administrators, researchers, and policymakers annually. Her research was featured alongside hundreds of doctoral workshops and institutes aligned to California’s English Learner Roadmap, placing her findings directly in front of California Department of Education leadership, district superintendents, and the state’s leading bilingual education scholars.
Sailee presented her research, “Habla Arte: Bilingual Arts Practices that Legitimize Multilingual Voices in School,” alongside co-authors Reinaldo Cabrera Perez and Dr. Elizabeth Peña of UC Irvine’s School of Education. Her year-long study of over 45 students showed significant gains in language legitimacy, artistic confidence, and bilingual engagement, reaching CDE leadership, district superintendents, and the state’s leading bilingual education scholars in the process
Sailee Charlu presented her research in direct partnership with ROLE Collective co-founders Dr. Savithry Namboodiripad (Associate Professor of Linguistics, University of Michigan) and Dr. Ethan Kutlu (Assistant Professor, University of Iowa), delivering her findings bilingually in Spanish and English before the Collective’s international network of 3000+ scholars spanning linguistics, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, and clinical practice. As one of the symposium’s featured presenters, she joined a program built around invited keynote talks and structured cross-institutional dialogue, positioning her work within a global effort to reframe how language experience and cultural resilience are studied and understood.
Our founder was selected to present her Habla Arte research before an international assembly of researchers and policy makers under the 2026 theme, “Collaborative Action for a Sustainable Future” — a global platform explicitly aligned with the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Delivering her presentation bilingually in Spanish and English, she placed her research directly within two of the conference’s core action tracks: Education & Youth Engagement (SDG 4 & 17) and Gender Equality & Social Inclusion (SDG 5 & 10). In doing so, she positioned Habla Arte not merely as a regional education program, but as a replicable, evidence-based model for advancing global education equity.
Sailee founded and led the Habla Futures Initiative International Research and Policy Conference, presenting her Habla Arte research findings to over 100 attendees, including 12 featured speakers from 12 countries, 12 U.S. states, and roughly 50 institutions worldwide, including Yale, Penn State, and UBC. Co-hosted by UC Irvine’s Bilingualism Matters California Initiative, OCDE, CDE, and Californians Together, the virtual conference spanned three tracks: Research, Policy & Systems, and Education, marking the start of an intended annual tradition.
Sailee met with Laura Wentworth, Director of the Research-Practice Partnership Program at California Education Partners, and Jane Weiss, Stanford doctoral candidate in Curriculum Studies & Teacher Education, Charlotte Woo, and Ramon Martinez to discuss opportunities for Habla Futures’ translanguaging research and bilingual education work to inform policy decisions within California school districts, and to explore a deeper collaboration with the Stanford-Sequoia K-12 Research Collaborative.
Immigration Enforcement and Preventative Healthcare Avoidance: A Quasi-Experimental Analysis of Outpatient and OBGYN Utilization Among U.S. Hispanic Adults (2025-2026)
University of California, Irvine, School of Education — Sailee Charlu, Barry University Department of Economics — Dr. A. Marsella (PhD)
This study applies an event-study difference-in-differences design to twelve years of nationally representative MEPS data to assess how the January 2017 immigration enforcement escalation affected preventative healthcare utilization among U.S. Hispanic adults. Comparing outpatient and OBGYN visit rates for Hispanic versus non-Hispanic adults aged 18–56 against a 2016 baseline, the study finds statistically significant, growing declines in outpatient visits from 2017–2019, and deeper, more persistent declines in OBGYN visits through 2020. The findings offer strong quasi-experimental evidence that immigration enforcement functions as a structural determinant of healthcare access, with disproportionate effects on reproductive and maternal care.
Publication: Charlu, S. (2026). Immigration Enforcement and Preventative Healthcare Avoidance: A Quasi-Experimental Analysis of Outpatient and OBGYN Utilization Among U.S. Hispanic Adults, 2009–2020. Contemporary Economic Policy.
Our founder presented her MEPS research at the 12th annual ICOPH, a conference series that in its most recent in-person editions has convened over 200 delegates from 35+ countries spanning six continents, organized by the International Institute of Knowledge Management (TIIKM). Presenting under the conference’s theme, “Beyond Boundaries: Advancing Public Health through Sustainability, Innovation, and Global Change,” she positioned immigration enforcement as a structural determinant of health before an international cohort of public health researchers, practitioners, and policymakers, engaging directly with global health equity discourse well beyond U.S. borders.
Our founder presented her research in direct partnership with TMC Conference Chairs Prof. Ibrahim Sirkeci (International Business School, Manchester, UK) and Prof. Özgür H. Çınar (University of Greenwich, UK), joining a global assembly that in recent years has convened over 500 scholars from more than 60 countries across 90+ parallel sessions and multiple plenary discussions. Founded in 2012 and held annually with past keynote speakers from institutions including SOAS University of London, Princeton University, and Southern Methodist University, TMC placed her research on immigration enforcement and healthcare access alongside some of the most established voices in global migration studies.
