ASCEND Elementary School, Oakland CA
Participate in the Habla Spanish Language School and Teacher Institute in Mérida, MX, to create a K-8 arts-integrated newcomer program that addresses historic marginalization through transformative pedagogies and fosters belonging, linguistic dignity, and cultural celebration.
Visiting the ancient Mayan pyramids and city of Uxmal!
Creating self-portraits at the Teacher Institute
Teachers from around the world together at the Teacher Institute!
Me and my fellow classmates after our first week.
Our feast after a five-hour long cooking class about traditional Yucatecan cuisine
Watching traditional dance in the city center---each night of the week had a different cultural event!
The most powerful learning experience from my fellowship came at the culminating Teacher Institute that I attended at the Habla language school. I had spent the previous four weeks taking their Spanish immersion classes. Then, in the final week of professional development, I was able to peek behind the curtain to understand how the teachers at the school developed their lessons and approached teaching through a lens of art, creativity, and imagination.
During my trip, I learned that I am a risk taker, but also need to work through a lot of fear around speaking in a language I’m learning! I constantly felt out of my comfort zone–which is the perfect place to learn and grow!--but I found it difficult not only from a language-learning perspective, but from a confidence perspective. Professionally, this informs my teaching practice in that I’ve gained so much empathy for my students.
I had so much more opportunity to learn about the history and culture of Merida, Yucatán, than I had initially envisioned. Originally, I had imagined my experience centered around immersing myself in the language, and less so in understanding the deep history of the place I was in. Of course, I should have known that you can’t separate language from location and its context, so I was able to learn so much about the Mayan and colonial history of Merida and the Yucatán.
Since beginning the new school year, I’ve already seen so many ways that the learnings from my fellowship have impacted my teaching practice. I've incorporated art-centered pedagogical approaches to my lessons. I’ve started off the year with more confidence in building relationships with the families and students. In addition to creating lessons aligned with my learnings at the Teachers Institute, I plan to create spaces for newcomer families to connect with one another and build community.
Every week of our language learning culminated in a short, low-stakes performance in front of the other classes. This created a memorable, artistic practice in which we could ground our learning. It also was an opportunity to use language in an authentic context in which we were creating and expressing ourselves. I hope to create this learning experience for students by implementing a weekly or monthly presentation of learning.
I hope to use my experience in Mexico this summer as a springboard to deepen my learning and better understand the culture and country that many of my students have roots in. This will enable me to further connect to families and students. I am planning on starting an afterschool English club, create a newcomer family group, and, furthermore, share my learnings with my coworkers to show them how they can include best-practices for supporting language learners.