Post by Cristina Zimmerman: Cristina is in her 13th year of teaching Spanish, the last three years at Bettendorf High School. You can follow her on twitter at @CristinaZimmer4
My mom was born in Mexico and immigrated to the U.S. after she
and my father married when she was 32 years old. My dad's parents were also
Mexican immigrants. My earliest memories are of eating huevos rancheros,
frijoles and drinking atole for breakfast while Julio Iglesias (yes, Enrique's
dad) or Lucia Mendez played on the record player in the background. Some of
those breakfasts included homemade salsa made by drying out chiles on the comal
and then grinding them up on the molcajete. Trips to the Mexican grocery store
for pan dulce and carnitas were frequent and on Saturday nights, Sábado Gigante
was the only show that we watched (If you don't know what any of these things
are, no worries. Neither did my students. And thus the reason for this blog
post). It was important to my parents that their children be exposed to their
culture, even from the small white, rural town of Eldridge, Iowa.
Nearly every summer we drove 2,000 plus miles to visit my
grandparents in Villagrán, Guanajuato, México (You should look up Guanajuato.
It's beautiful. And if you want something not so beautiful, also look up Las
Momias de Guanajuato. Then let me know what you think). Crammed into a Dodge
Aspen station wagon, my brother, sister and I made memories that none of my
friends could on their family trips to Six Flags. There is no better way to
learn appreciation for what you have (and what others don't) than to cross the
Mexican/American border by car or foot. Truly, one is stepping into a different
world. Instantly, the language changes, the signage, cars, and buildings shift
backwards about 20 years, and roads that were once wide open and clean, are now
narrow, dirty and full of bicycles and crazy drivers. Yet, I loved it. I loved
the changes of odors, the landscape, the people, the appreciation for and
importance of religion, the music, the food, and most importantly, the
language! I'm sure that any language teacher reading this can identify with
that love of another culture. That love is what drives many of us to teach the
language that we do.
Somewhere, though, we language teachers forgot something. If
you look at most textbooks, they are organized by superficial themes and then
are broken down by grammar topic and a list of vocabulary relating to said
superficial theme. At the very end of those chapters will be a page about
something culturally relevant to the theme. Usually by the time you get to the
end of the chapter and the culture page, you're so pressed for time that you
might talk about it for 15 minutes then move on to review the grammar tense you
really need them to memorize for the test (yeah, the one that they will forget
about three days later, give or take a day).
Rinse and repeat.
Molcajete
How many times have you heard someone say, "I took four
years of (insert foreign language) and I remember how to conjugate a verb, but
couldn't tell you what I was saying?" Then they might go on to say,
"But I do remember when we (insert cultural activity/theme) and it was a
lot of fun!"
Problem?
Teachers are creatures of habit. We do what we think works
(because if it ain't broke, why fix it?) and often teach how our teachers
taught us (because if we learned it, it must work!). Our teachers, for years,
drilled us with conjugation charts, fill-in-the-blank grammar exercises, and
dull listening activities. It is all we know as language teachers. Well, I'm
here to admit something: My teaching was broke. I was that teacher. I knew I
was unhappy, but I didn't know why. It must be because these kids didn't study
their vocabulary list! It must be because they didn't practice on the
conjugation website long enough! It couldn't be because what I was teaching
them lacked context, meaning, and cultural relevance!
Comal
Enter Twitter and the Global Exchange Initiative.
I can't rave enough about Twitter (and more specifically how
it led me to the resources of @karacjacobs and collaboration with her via
Twitter). I know many teachers are fearful of the T word and its hashtags;
however, Twitter has truly changed how and what I teach. By making connections
with others, collaboration through tweets and direct messages, participating in
#langchat discussions, and sharing of resources, I can now say that I feel like
my teaching is repaired. Not perfect,
but definitely healing. Why? Because in my Spanish IV classes I have taken the
focus away from memorization of perfect conjugations and context-less
vocabulary lists, to using the language to learn about current events and
increase cultural knowedge and awareness (ideas I hadn't thought about until
collaborating with others on Twitter). Rather than working to help kids
memorize vocabulary through games (although we still play them on occasion),
students are using this new vocabulary while discussing, reading, listening,
and writing about current events and cultural themes that are interesting and
relevant. I still teach grammar but do it in the context of what we're studying
and try to find it in the authentic resources we are using in class. Students
can carry these themes and events and apply them to other classes and in their
lives in the future. It provides them a global perspective that they were
denied by previous lessons that artificially taught them about por and para,
for example. And if the themes/events/topics are no longer relevant, I get to
look for new resources to use that are, because I'm no longer tied to a
textbook. It's a perfect marriage!
Guanajuato, Mexico
Furthermore, by puttting culture first, I now have more time
and opportunities to bring in guests and seek other learning opportunities for
my students. We are currently studying the topic of illegal immigration. To
give students faces to connect with visitors of our country, we welcomed
college students from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Mexico
who are studying at Scott Community College on a scholarship program. My
students maintained a 40-minute question and answer session with them about
various themes, with little help from me. Was the grammar perfect? No. Was
their message communicated clearly and were students engaged? Yes. Is this a
memory that they will take with them in the future? Absolutely.
Another benefit of putting cultural and global awareness
first is being able to participate in the Global Exchange Inititiative. In
addition to our scholarship student guests this week, Robert Dillon, (@ideaguy42) Director
of Technology in Affton, Missouri, and the man in charge of this initiative, came to
visit. Our students at Bettendorf High School, along with four other high
schools around the nation (coast to coast), are assisting in publishing e-books
that will be used in an afterschool literacy program for students in Guatemala.
Our students have been tasked with reading authentic children's stories,
editing and processing them, then
selecting illustrations for their books. How much more meaningful is it for
students to know that the work that they are producing will now end
up--literally--in the hands of Guatemalan children? Global collaboration and
service learning. Not possible in a grammar only curriculum.
So how do I tie this back to my childhood trips to Mexico?
Well, I can't. I cannot take my students on those same trips, summer after
summer, to give them the appreciation of a culture so misunderstood by many
Americans. However, by putting culture as the driving force in what I teach,
students can explain to you, in Spanish, what is a comal and why corn is
important in Mexican cuisine. They might also be able to explain to you how
corn production plays a part in illegal immigration to the United States. Their
conjugation of the subjunctive is not flawless. But it wouldn't have been if
that was the only thing that I had worked on this past week. Even in the city
of Bettendorf, Iowa students can be exposed to culture and collaborate
globally, without traveling 2,000 miles in a station wagon...which wouldn't be
safe now due to narcoviolencia.
Ask a Spanish IV student about that......
Las Momias de Guanajuato