Marisol Franco

América: ¿Un nuevo hogar?

exhibition: Thursday, October 28, 2010

This was a five-week project intended to answer the following essential questions:

• What is home? (One of the essential questions for the semester as a whole)

• Why do migrants choose to leave their home?

• What is the cultural significance of Día de los Muertos?

To answer these questions, students in my beginning/intermediate Spanish classes were asked to:

• Create a fictionalized account in Spanish from the perspective of an illegal migrant.

• Create a replica of the border between the U.S. and Mexico as a class. The border was decorated with murals depicting perspectives on "home" gathered from research, interviews and student opinion.

• Create 2 altars following the traditions of Día de los Muertos (1 altar for the deceased migrants they researched and 1 altar for students’ loved ones.)

• Present all products during an exhibition that included live readings of the narratives and docent-led mini-tours.

What did you teach and how did you teach it?

Cultural Component:

This project highlighted the factors that affect migration to the United States from Latin American countries. Because the focus was on illegal immigration, we looked into the factors that either push or pull people from their homes and compel them to make the drastic decision of risking their lives to enter the U.S. illegally.

Students also had the opportunity to immerse themselves in the celebration of Día de los Muertos. As a common access point, students compared it to Halloween, noting the similarities and differences between the two celebrations. Students then went through the process of preparing for a traditional Día de los Muertos celebration as part of their exhibition.

Linguistic Component:

Students practiced producing Spanish both in written and verbal form information from various sources to create a fact-based fictional account. Because the class is a mixture of beginning and intermediate students, they had the option of writing either in the present or preterite (simple past) tense and to use the scaffolding drafting tools provided to them as support. Students were also provided with sample narratives to use as a foundation in formatting and organizing their own narratives.

Instructional methods:

1. Direct Instruction: I included 15-20 minute mini-lessons throughout the project to provide basic information about migratory patterns, to provide grammar support during the initial stages of the writing process, and to explain department roles.

2. Use of graphic organizers: I used graphic organizers throughout the project, especially when my instruction was purely in Spanish.

3. Think-pair-share: Students were given daily journal topics (either a question or quote as a prompt) relating to an issue of migration throughout the project’s span.

4. Scaffolding: In writing their accounts, students were given varying levels of guidance in order to insure that their final draft included all necessary components and accurately portrayed the story of an illegal migrant. This included a cloze-based draft 1, a detailed outline for draft 2 and a checklist for draft 3.

5. Drafting: All portions of the exhibition (individual and department wide) went through an extensive drafting process. Students wrote three drafts of the fictionalized accounts before their final exhibition-ready draft and created at least 2 drafts or mock-ups of the other components of the exhibition (i.e. recordings, altars, murals, and crosses).

6. Peer critique: Students had opportunities to critique both their writing and their exhibition materials following a peer critique protocol intended to maximize thoughtful, relevant feedback.

7. Opportunities for student choice: Students were given the opportunity to apply for a “job” within the three available departments (Calavera crew, Border Art and Construction and Altar creation). The application asked students to reflect on their strengths and weaknesses and determine what they could contribute to the preparation to the exhibition as a whole. Students were able to showcase their talents as builders, artists, craftspeople, managers, public speakers and organizers.

What concepts and skills did the students gain in this class through this project?

Learning Goals:

1. Students will use the verb "ser" to provide a description of personality, appearance and origin.

2. Students will use regular verbs in the present/preterite to describe basic actions.

3. Students will explore and discuss the reasons for illegal immigration into the United States.

4. Students will research different regions of Mexico/Latin America and determine why people from those regions migrate to the U.S.

5. Students will analyze Día de los Muertos as a cultural celebration of life through death.

How is the curriculum for this project academically rich and grade-level challenging?

Students were challenged to not simply delve into Spanish from a linguisitic standpoint, but also approach the cultural and socio-political issues affecting Spanish-speaking people. The fact that the issue of immigration is so current and relevant to this area, there were several access points that allowed for deeper discussion.

The writing component allowed students to push themselves as producers of the language, both beginning and intermediate Spanish learners. The final products reflected the different levels of Spanish within the classes, but it also reflects the effort that all students put forth in order to do the lives of their chosen migrants justice.

To what extent was there integration across disciplines in your class through this project?

While there was no explicit planning done with other team teachers, several of the themes that were presented in this project are touched upon in other courses, humanities in particular. Migration trends are discussed in the 9th grade, and several students entered the project with that as background knowledge.

Which Habits of Heart and Mind (HoHM) and Design Principles were utilized in this project?

Compassion: One of the goals of the project was that students not simply feel sympathy for migrants who face dire circumstances in their countries of origin, but rather empathize with those people and recognize the reasons for the hard decisions they make. Being so close to the border, students are in one way or another affected by immigration and through this project we wanted to put a human face to such a contested issue in this area.

Refinement: Students had several opportunities to refine both their writing piece and their group components. There were benchmarks set in place designed to have students present their progress and get feedback from the teacher, peers and audience members.

Perspective: The writing piece in particular pushed students to assume the role of a migrant and imagine the circumstances that lead to migrants deciding to leave their homeland. In their reflections, students commented that it was difficult, but that it really helped them empathize with people who have completely different lives from their own.

Evidence: Students, both individually and as departments, were asked to keep record of their progress as evidence of learning. The exhibition served as a means of presenting that evidence and the project outcomes to outside audience members (family and visitors).

Perseverance: For many students, this was the first time they were 1) working on a collaborative project and 2) writing a complete narrative in Spanish, so they definitely faced some challenges that were overcome during the 5 weeks of the project.

How did you incorporate refinement through this project?

Teacher refinement:

Based on both my observations throughout the process and students' reflections after the project last year, I brought back this project with several modifications.

1. Students working on the construction of the border itself felt that they had very little to do once the border was erected, so I decided to include the ongoing conversations about home and migration into the exhibition.

2. Students created large collective art pieces and altars incorporating their individual research in order to maximize the connections being made.

3. The Día de los Muertos component was more prominent this year around, as students read their narratives in traditional calavera face painting, which is common to Día de los Muertos celebrations both in the U.S. and in Latin America.