Spanish Community Service Learning Anecdote 7

by Ann Abbott

When I talked to my Spanish & Entrepreneurship students about fundraising letters, I based my presentation on Tom Ahern's How to Write Fundraising Materials That Raise More Money.

The anecdote pulled from this student's letter shows two things Ahern emphasizes:
  1. Link accomplishment to need. "[C]elebrate your triumphs," Ahern writes. "But always leave room for accomplishing more, if only you had more resources" (60). For foreign language instructors, it may be intellectually difficult for you to put the needs of an underserved population at the center of a "sob story." But for these organizations that are on-the-ground, serving them and strapped for resources, they need to create a desire within the donor to give of his or her time or money.
  2. Find your emotional twin set. A twin set is a pair of emotional poles, like fear and hope. The fear here is Luis will be put back a year; the hope is that you will volunteer your time to read with him so that he won't fall behind.
Luis is a fifth grader at Leal Elementary School in Urbana. His parents are Mexican immigrants that moved here with the hopes of giving Luis a better life. As a student in the bilingual program at Leal, Luis spends his school days speaking both Spanish and English and trying to learn all of his subjects in both languages. Because his class ratio is twenty students to one teacher, Luis struggles with reading since there is simply not enough time for the teacher to listen to all of the students read one by one. Luis faces the risk of being held back a year just because his reading abilities are slipping due to the school’s lack of resources. However, this injustice can be fixed.

As a volunteer at Leal Elementary School, I help kids like Luis not only maintain their reading skills but also improve them by spending one-on-one time with the students during the school day helping them read. ... That is why there is such a high demand for volunteers at Leal because without them the students could lose the reading skills that they worked so hard to attain in the first place. Please consider being a tutor at this great school.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Vocabulary for Parent-Teacher Conferences

Image
I'm very happy that so many students responded to our community partner's need for help. Our students' language skills will help Central High School's Latino parents better communicate with the teachers during the parent-teacher conferences next week. Central's secretary will contact the students directly to schedule times with them. Here is some vocabulary help for students. Materias. School subjects are "materias" NOT "sujetos." You should remember subjects from your intro Spanish courses, but here are some reminders: historia, matemáticas, inglés, física, química, biología, educación física, etc. General vocabulary. Notas = grades; aprobar = to pass; suspender = to fail; conducta, comportamiento = behavior. Topics. Ms. Citraro offers the following advice: "The topics and vocabulary that would come up are about the subjects at school. For example: no ha entregado las tareas tiene que tomar el examen otra vez habla mucho en clase falta muc
Read more

How to Correctly File Hispanic Names

Image
I know that community-based learning students don't like it when they are asked to file during their time in the community. However, their learning goals are to improve their Spanish and knowledge of Latino cultures. Filing information on clients with Hispanic names helps them with both. And imagine the impact of mis-filing for the organizations where our students work and and their clients. That's why I was unhappy to learn that many SPAN 232 students did not do well on their exam section asking them to put some Hispanic names in alphabetical order. I can imagine that some students feel that putting names into alphabetical order isn't important. It is! It is especially important in the organizations where they work because they are dealing with clients who may not have "accommodated" to the American system of using only one last name. And it is especially important for clients whose papers are so important for their legal status, medical information and oth
Read more

Interview with Jessica Horn of ACCIÓN Chicago

Image
By Carolyn Kloecker , Span 232 student This past week I completed an assignment for my Business Communications class (SPCM 211) which was to interview someone in a field that I am interested in working for in the future. I asked her many questions about the organization, and lots of information can be found on their website www.accionchicago.org . This organization is a Community Partner with Spanish & Illinois, and has an extensive connection with the Spanish-speaking community in the Chicagoland area. Here are a few of the questions and answers from Jessica: Is ACCIÓN a fairly new organization? How did it begin? ACCIÓN Chicago started in 1994, but the parent organization, ACCIÓN was started in 1961. It is the largest micro-lending organization, and it began in Venezuela, and took root in the U.S. in 1991. How do loan officers communicate with clients? Mostly by phone, as people call in to the office to get a loan for their small business. The website is also a main form o
Read more