Meilin Chong and Isaí Jiminez join the Raising A Reader MA excited to help parents and caregivers create daily home reading routines with their young children.

Meilin joined the Raising A Reader MA team in December 2019 as a Program Coordinator supporting the Merrimack Valley program, eager to collaborate with families in promoting an active reading culture. Her mother read fables and stories in Spanish daily as a child, which sparked her interest for reading and writing. Among her favorite children’s books are The Giving Tree, Where the Sidewalk Ends, and The Three Little Pigs (in Spanish). She has had teaching experiences in the Greater Boston Area as well as in South Africa, Nicaragua, and Ecuador. She has dedicated her education career to focus on international and domestic bilingual education, languages, and literacy. Meilin recently completed an M.S.Ed in International Education Development at University of Pennsylvania, where she focused on language issues in education and ethnographic research, and holds a B.S. in Counseling Psychology and Early Childhood Education from Wheelock College.

Isai also joined Raising A Reader MA at the end of 2019 as the Program Coordinator for Greater Boston. He comes with over 6 years of teaching and coordination experience. Throughout his career he has worked with people from all over the world as an English and Spanish instructor. He’s passionate about languages and one of his goals is to become a polyglot. He has a bachelor’s degree in Teaching English as a Second Language and recently finished a certification as a medical interpreter. He fondly remembers sharing books with his grandmother, some of his favorite books to read when he was young include Where the Wild Things Are, The Little Prince, Robinson Crusoe and all sort of comic books. He personally identifies with RAR MA mission of closing the literacy opportunity gap by empowering families to develop shared reading routines. He’s motivated to reach families and help them realize the value of reading for young children.