Broadening the experience

When I was studying in Spain for grad school I remember a professor talking about "culture with a capitol c" which many people think of as tacos, bullfights and Picasso, Dali or Frida Kahlo.  At the time I didn't really understand why she felt like culture was so much more.

Now, I have the maturity to understand that culture is so much more than the food people eat in a specific region or artwork produced by artists of a certain ethnicity.  Culture is the fabric of who we are--what makes us, well us.

My own culture is a mixed bag.  I grew up in Norman, Oklahoma but am not a Sooner.  I'm a Christian but I don't identify with a lot of the loud voices who share my faith my not necessarily my values.  I'm a redhead but I was adopted--who knows if I'm Irish or whatever other ethnicity.  I personally choose to claim Scottish because I love the movie Brave and when I hear bagpipes something deep inside me wants to roar and go into battle.  Also I'm great at rolling my Rs.  I sound great saying Scottish things.

Many students just need one semester of Spanish so that's all they take.  When I step back and ask myself what I really want them to walk away with, it gets complicated.  According to the state they need to be successful at a beginner level in speaking, reading, writing and understanding Spanish.  Great.  They do lots of practice with those skills.  However, there is also a culture component as is shown here:

It's easy to gloss over this, especially in an online class because the curriculum has a culture section in each chapter.  I like that the state specifically said students have to identify and discuss.  Identify is a low-level cognitive task.  "Tacos, bullfights and Hispanic artists" are easy to identify.  But to discuss them is a bigger ask.  One that as an instructor I get excited about.  I get to broaden a student's mindset by challenging them to see that not everyone in the world is the same.  The fabric of who we are is different.  

I've launched my new 1411 online and so far it's going well.  Students are doing assignments and I'm tracking progress.  Today I'm going to add a video about culture for this chapter.  It wasn't on my to do list to launch this class but sharing my knowledge and challenging students to discuss culture is important.  I'm still wrestling with exactly the how of all of this but it's an important part of this class.  I'm glad I didn't let it slip by.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Discussing AI usage with students

Today in class we wrapped up Ch 1.  Ch 1 Quiz is later this week. I have found that many students have test anxiety.  I have weekly announcements I send out to my beginning classes that give study tips.  Hopefully this helps them feel more prepared as we go into quizzes and tests.  This point of the class is a natural time to discuss ethical usage of AI. Today we discussed ethical usage of AI with Spanish.  It was a great discussion.   A student pointed out it's helpful to use AI to make practice material to study.  This was new for me. I give them a chapter 1 summary that has everything on it.  In my mind, use that to study the material.  Make flash cards.  Practice them. I'm unsure how an AI can improve upon that, but if a student has found a way to learn the material, fantastic.
Read more

Amazing OER materials

As I'm building my Spanish conversation class, I'm thrilled that our librarian helped me find an amazing resource.  It's videos of Native-Spanish speakers telling about specific topics:  numbers, food, colors, etc.  The videos are very short and easy for beginning students to understand. They also already have CC in English and Spanish.  This resource is fantastic.   Hooray for wonderful OER resources!
Read more

Receiving feedback

 I'm in the process of creating my 5th class using OER materials.  Whew.  That's a lot. This time around, I'm creating a class I haven't taught before.  When I redesigned my 1411 class I had already taught it numerous times with 2 different curricula, both excellent.  I knew what the class should feel like.  I switched over to using different materials, but it wasn't really new to me.  The same was true for the other 3 classes I redesigned. This time around I'm creating a conversation class.  I'm at the point now where I have the scope and sequence complete and each chapter has a summary of the vocab we'll be studying.  I'm now building out the drill assignments.   When I build assignments I like to label them as "drill" or "apply."  With a drill assignment, students know they are practicing the information at a very basic comprehension level.   Today I wrote a drill assignment and just wasn't sure if it was good....
Read more