Español 255 / 001 APPLES

Otoño de 2010

Español 255

MANZANAS

 
 
 


Service Learning with

Spanish Conversation

Spanish 255, sec 1, Fall 2010, MWF DE 201 10:00

Prof. Bill Maisch (maisch@unc.edu)

 

 

What is Spanish 255 APPLES?

 

SPAN 255 – APPLES, fifth-semester Spanish Conversation and Service Learning, optimizes the synthesis of Spanish for Communication and learning from meaningful, face-to-face, service in the local Hispanic Community.  Students will work a minimum of 30 hours, mostly with English-deficient Hispanic children in the public elementary schools.  We will reflect on what we can learn from that service during our daily class discussions, our discussion board and compositions, all of which have been especially designed to keep the class focused at all times on both service and learning.  Students will practice those specific communicative structures and thematic vocabulary needed to do their service as well as to discuss that service in class in meaningful ways.  Students in SPAN 255 APPLES will receive three hours of credit for SPAN 255, and an additional one hour of credit for SPAN 293, Spanish Service Learning (which fulfills New Curriculum EE requirement). Prerequisites: SPAN 204.

 

Click HERE for this fall’s course web site (or cut and paste https://sakaipilot.unc.edu/access/content/group/29ff7e0a-497c-4bfb-abf5-f22117cdb001/web255A/OS255AhomeF10.htm)

 

 

What is Prof. Maisch's "Philosophy" of Service Learning in Spanish 255 APPLES?

Spanish 255 section 1 for Fall 2010 is an APPLES Service Learning course requiring 30 hours of face-to-face service in the local Hispanic Community, and our reflections on what we can learn from that service.   Since Spanish 255 is a fifth-semester Spanish Conversation course that is driven by communication and the exploration of Hispanic Culture, your service in that community and your work in the course are naturally complimentary and mutually illuminating.   

The really exciting thing about true Service Learning is that neither you NOR I know what your reflections will yield.  When a whole class of my students works with Hispanic elementary school students, I do know form having done it before that there are certain predictable things that several will probably see and reflect on (like Hispanic children who "act out" in certain ways and those who would rather speak English), but every semester, at least so far, they also reflect on something that is new to me, so that I keep learning too. The only thing that's worse than volunteerism that's not service-LEARNING is the opposite approach that I call "Pseudo-research assistant" (note the placement of the hyphen), which is where the professor thinks that he or she knows ahead of time most everything you are going to learn. That, as you will see, is not my style.

Please read our “philosophy” of service below, and look forward to one of the most rewarding and meaningful experiences of your academic career.

 

 

Uno de mis alumnos del año pasado escribió:

 

“Antes de este semestre yo no quería continuar español aquí en la universidad. Pero, ahora entiendo que el idioma es más importante que muchas de mis otras clases porque con mi proyecto APPLES, pude ayudar a la comunidad con mi español.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What is SPAN 293 Service Learning - DO I have to sign up for it?  How is my grade determined?.

 

Your grade in Spanish 255 (three hours of credit) will be determined according to course-wide 255 contract appended to your syllabus.

Students enrolled in the APPLES section of Spanish 255 will receive an extra one credit hour for Spanish 293, Spanish Service Learning, technically a separate course in which you will be automatically enrolled during the first week of class by the Romance Language Department Office.  The grade that you receive for Spanish 293 will be determined as follows:

50% for completing your required hours of service and attending APPLES orientation* (you must keep a log)

5% for turning in the signed APPLES contract by September 16th

15% for attending the 3 reflection days (see syllabus)

30% for the three brief essays handed in on reflection days; these essays are written in Spanish and suggested topics will involve a review of linguistic structures being studied. (due on reflection days – see syllabus)

       

  

FYI - What is our Philosophy of Service in the local Hispanic Community?

 

Why do the best ESL, total immersion, and “gradual” bilingual ed. programs fail to keep Hispanic youths from dropping out of school and fail to give other newly arrived Hispanics what they most need to survive and succeed in our society?

What do newly-arrived Hispanics, not yet proficient in the English language and US culture, most need?  This may sound like a loaded question, but it may very well be that what is most needed may not be necessarily what we think they most need, nor even what they think they most need.  I recently asked my seminar students what they thought newly-arrived Hispanics most needed, and they predictably said:  1) proficiency in the English language; and, 2) understanding of US customs, laws, and culture. . . . Perhaps we should be asking first what anyone needs to survive and excel in the United States today.  Certainly an understanding of our language, our laws, and our culture is an urgent need; self-assurance and strong self-image, however, are the most essential ingredients for success in this society, and these are the very qualities that are often undermined by our well-intended efforts to accelerate linguistic and cultural assimilation.

Collaboration between university students of Spanish language and Hispanics who want to learn to speak English should be allowed to take its natural course, by which I mean sessions in which both languages are used more or less equally.  When I first had students involved in this type of service, I encouraged them to use communicative language teaching methods in their sessions, discouraged quick-fix translation sessions, and discouraged them from speaking Spanish with those they were teaching.  I realize now that this was the wrong approach.  Communicative ESL classes, English only, total immersion, and “gradual” bilingual education all send the implicit message that Hispanics’ own culture and language is of little or no value in this country, and the sooner they can forget it and replace it with our culture and language the better off they will be.  This is, of course, not only untrue, but undermines the development of strong self-image without which no one can survive much less thrive in this society.  Researchers in education are beginning to find that equally balanced Spanish-English bilingual education (AKA Dual-Language Program) is working where ESL, total immersion, and gradual bilingual ed. all fail.  They hypothesize that developing bilingualism, a valuable and marketable skill in itself, also enhances critical thinking skills.  This may well be the case, but what is more important is that it sends the message that their own culture, their own language, the skills they bring to this country, the people they are when they arrive, are all highly valued in the United States.