Spanish & Illinois

Good luck, Jacqui, on your applications to medical school! by Ann Abbott Many students who take Spanish community service learning classes are also interested in going on to medical school. I agree with them that being able to use Spanish in a clinical setting--not just a Spanish classroom--is a great asset when applying to medical school and beyond. I would suggest that all students who want to combine premed and Spanish study what Jacqui Kukulski has done. Study abroad. (Just be sure you truly immerse yourself in the language and culture. You need to make an effort to do this; it doesn't just happen.) Get actual work experience using your Spanish in a health-care setting. Jacqui did this as part of her "Spanish in the Community" community service learning work. She made the effort to find a place for herself at the Frances Nelson Health Clinic, even though they are not an official community partner.  Build your resume in a way that truly highlights your accom...

My Spanish and Social Entrepreneurship students wrote a take-home final exam: a cover letter for an actual job opening in a non-profit in Mexico. The course content was about creating economically sustainable nonprofits with linguisitically and culturally appropriate programming. The students did a great job matching the course concepts and work to the nature of a real nonprofit job ad. by Ann Abbott How do you test students in a Spanish community service learning class? That is a question that people often ask. I have already shared one test that I gave this semester. Final exam for SPAN 232 Spanish in the Community Here is the take-home test that I gave in my other course--a content-based course about social entrepreneurship that also incorporates CSL work: SPAN 332 Spanish and Social Entrepreneurship 1. Encuentra en Hacesfalta.org.mx un anuncio para un vacante que te interese de verdad . 2. Además de leer con cuidado el anuncio, e xplorala ...

What does "parent involvement" mean in your culture? by Ann Abbott Earlier this month I participated in the " Responding to Immigrants National Conference: Bridging Research and Practice to Meet the Needs of Immigrants in New Growth Communities ." My workshop was a "how-to" session on getting started with a community service learning (CSL) course. Mostly, however, I was interested in the sessions I attended. There is a lot of really great research being done about serving the needs of immigrants in education and human services. One session in particular provided very good examples of what "culture" looks like in education: "Immigrant Integration and Civic Engagement in a Chicago Suburb" by Melissa Abad and Julio Capales, Sociology, University of Illinois-Chicago. Here are just a few examples of missed opportunities for transcultural competence in schools. Officials felt that Latino parents were not involved in their children...

Brianna Anderson, "Spanish in the Community" student, serving tamales at the Refugee Center's fundraising dinner. What research questions could we ask about her time in the community, her Spanish and her learning? by Ann Abbott Out of the many positive things ACTFL does for our profession, one of the latest efforts involves establishing and supporting research priorities. As explained in "Moving Language Education Forward: ACTFL's Research Priorities Initiative" ( The Language Educator  April 2012), the project follows these steps: 1. Researchers conducted reviews of the literature in nine research priority categories. Those reviews will be published this summer. 2. Those research priorities were condensed to five areas: Foreign Language Teacher Preparation Model Programs: Documentation, Implementation, and Outcomes Profiles of High-Performing Foreign Language Teachers in K-12 Settings Language Use in the Community Mentoring K-16 Foreig...

Grace Larson  on a climbing trip in Southern Spain, in El Chorro.   by Ann Abbott Now that she has graduated from the University of Illinois, Grace Larson has job plans. They just don't involve an office. Or even a building. Grace is applying for jobs in wilderness therapy. She has taken her passion for climbing and outdoors adventures and combined that with her solid academic background, work experiences and proven ability to work with a diverse group of people. I know that Grace will excel in these jobs.  As she was preparing her applications, Grace asked me for a letter of recommendation. I always ask students to give me the information I need to write a good letter, and I'd like to share with you what Grace sent me . My hope is that Grace's words will show students how their behavior in the classroom (and in the community!) really counts.  Hey Ann! So, some basic info about myself that you might want to know: The course I took with you was...

Gabrielle Wooden, in Alicante with an amiguito. by Ann Abbott So many of my students just graduated this past weekend. Congratulations to all of them! It is a tough job market, and I know that many of them are struggling with tough decisions. Should I go to grad school? Should I go now or after working for a few years? How can I find a job that allows me to move out on my own? I really want to live abroad, but how can I find a job in another country? Gabrielle Wooden has made her decision and knows exactly what her plans are: Teach for America . Here are a few facts about Gabrielle: She had a  Global Studies  major and a  Spanish minor . She took "Spanish in the Community" with me and worked at Booker T. Washington Elementary School. She continued doing Spanish community service learning (CSL) work in my "Spanish and Social Entrepreneurship" course. She studied abroad in Alicante, Spain. She friended me on Facebook, so I am lucky to be able...

by Brianna Anderson Hola! Today I chose to include a picture of the library in Garden Hills.  The library in this school is fantastic—so much better than the one that I remember from my elementary years.  If memory serves me correctly, my library was about the same size as the one in Garden Hills, but the books were in terrible shape.  Reading is such an integral part of education that it only makes sense to keep a library in the best condition. But I really don’t want to focus this post on the library of Garden Hills and how I feel reading has helped my student progress academically.  I want to focus this post on what working in the community has done for me.  And that you just can’t really capture in a photo. I have had the opportunity to work with three different organizations during my time as a student in SPAN 232/332.  My main placement was SOAR, as I’m sure has been made clear at this point.  I have also volunteered several t...

by Susannah Koch I cannot believe that it is the end of my junior year and that this semester is over. Since coming back from Spain in December everything has flown by in a huge blur, and that includes this exciting spring semester. I have really enjoyed my experience in Spanish 232 and would like to dedicate this blog post to discussing how I have grown this semester, what I have learned, what I hope for the future and the summary that I gave to Alejandra about my time at Provena. This class has been a very unique experience amongst the other classes that I have taken at UIUC. I have always been drawn to activities and groups of a philanthropic nature and this class was no exception. Being able to combine my love of learning languages and my love of helping others has been the ideal experience and has allowed me to grow as both a student and person. Although my time in class and in the community were enjoyable, I was also forced outside of my comfort zone and made to realize...

by Susannah Koch Since my last post about the community health fair, things have really died down in terms of the amount of work I have been doing for Provena. I was unable to go to the heath fair at Garden Hills School in Urbana the weekend after the community health fair and have been mainly doing organizational work with Alejandra. She has been very busy with classes and conferences in Chicago about translation services. It is exciting to see that she is continuing her education and trying to make the language services department as successful as possible. I have grown to admire and respect Alejandra very much because she has such passion for what she does. I hope to one day be as passionate about my career as she is about hers. The work that I have been doing is in relation to the organization of the office and making the whole organization run smoother. Although this work is not glamorous, it is important to realize the significance of secretarial and organizational ta...

by April Nwatah For the past 4 years my mailing address has always ended in “Urbana, IL 61801.” However, since I’ve only lived here as a student, it should have actually read something along the lines of “The Bubble, IL 61801." I like to refer to the UIUC campus as “The Bubble” because it’s not an accurate representation of the real communities of Urbana and Champaign. During my first couple years of college I hardly ever left The Bubble, since I lived in the dorms and had pretty much everything that I needed right here. Everything that I had to say about Urbana and Champaign were related to the campus and nothing else. To me, Champaign stopped at around First Street and anything east of Lincoln Avenue in Urbana was Hipster territory. Needless to say, I was living in a false reality. Doing Spanish Community Service Learning (through SPAN 232 and SPAN 332) has brought me out of The Bubble and into the communities of Urbana and Champaign through the various projects tha...

My students' thank-you notes, ready to send to our community partners. by Ann Abbott I recently read this article about the importance of writing a follow-up note after a job interview .  Basically, the conclusion is that if you do not send a thank you message, you will not get the job. I'm happy to say that my Spanish community service learning (CSL) textbook, Comunidades: Más allá del aula , includes an activity in the very last Lección that requires students to write a thank you note to their supervisors in the community. There are specific instructions about what information to include, because I found over the years that students did not always know what made a compelling note. They need to include specific details to support an over-arching statement of what they have learned by working at the organization. Not only is this professionally important, it is also culturally important.  I always tell students that in most contexts in Hispanic cultures, it i...

by Haily Pribyl-Shay Although there were numerous moments of pure fear and embarrassment this past semester at Leal, there was not a day spent without heartfelt gestures from students and staff that made me feel at ease.  I became familiar with the routines of my teachers.  I also understood what my purpose was in the classroom and how I was best able to help the students. My routine usually began by sitting at my table in the corner of the fifth grade classroom.  I would observe the class and wait as they finished up their Daily Oral Language exercises.  The fifth graders would then be split up into vocabulary groups to check their homework, and I was assigned a student to help with their homework in spelling or vocabulary.  After working with the fifth graders, I would head to the second grade classroom.  There were two other volunteers in the classroom when I was there, so we usually spread ourselves out amongst the different activity station...

What? The objective of our team project is to create a handbook on ways of fundraising.   Our goal is to be able to give the next year’s class of SPAN 332 a guidebook on how to tackle the challenges of starting a fundraiser.   This includes information on how promote an image (branding), networking in the community (starting a fundraiser), and fundraising ideas specifically in the Champaign area (outlining the pro’s and con’s).   We’ve divided our project into three main components in which we think will be usefully information to pass down to the next group of students enrolled in Spanish 332. One of the challenges that we faced as a group was figuring out the initial steps of starting a fundraiser.   We found it difficult in planning a fundraiser without knowing what steps to take and without the tools to help us execute our plans.   Our group was very confused and slightly frustrated because we had no direction on what to do.   Since we felt like we w...

Team: Brianna, Carrie, Mackenzie and Claire Our group wrote a grant proposal and request to Zip Car in order to expand the transportation for the Community-Based Learning classes offered by the Spanish Department.  Our grant request was for the Public Engagement Grant via the University of Illinois Department for Public Engagement.  This grant is for community-based projects that also relate to course development and educational benefits for students as well as tie in with the university’s mission.  Because Spanish in the Community and Spanish and Entrepreneurship are both community-based courses, the grant perfectly fits the needs of these students.  These courses use hands-on experience in the community to not only help students improve their Spanish language skills, but also develop a sense of understanding of the world around them.  Specifically in the second course, students learn how to use these skills to work with and develop non-profit organization...

Team: Grace, Maggie and Val ¿Qué? Our team Valentino Contri, Maggie Flynn and myself, GraceLarson, worked to design and present information about our two community basedlearning Spanish classes to the community at a local symposium and showcase.The classes we are presenting are Spanish 232, Spanish in the Community andSpanish 332, Spanish and Entrepreneurship, designed and taught by our professorAnn Abbott. Our audience was the Public Engagement Symposium, which took placeat the ARC on April 18th, and the Service Learning and Social EntrepreneurshipShowcase which will be taking place in the Illini Union on May 2nd. Our mission was simple: Effectively provide informationabout our classes to the professors, students and community members whoattended the showcase and symposium, as well as receiving feedback from them.We aim to spread the word about this class; where we are involving ourselves inthe community, and why. Not only are we looking to inform future students, butinf...

Team: Susana, Joy and Alex The goal of our group project was to complete a service-learning grant application proposal for the State Farm Youth Advisory Board (SYAB).  Each year the SYAB service-learning grant is awarded to projects around the country, with funding up to $100,000. We selected the Access to Higher Education/Close the Achievement Gap issue area because we felt that we can relate to the issue because of the volunteer service that we are involved in.  Our team member, Susan, Alex and I all volunteer in an educational setting; Susan during school hours and Alex and I work with an after school program (SOAR).  We agreed that the education issue area was something that we are most passionate about.  At the beginning of our project, we did a lot of research into the grant application and other service-learning projects in order to fully understand what kind of projects the SYAB usually supports.  The next steps involved speaking with Professor Ab...

by Ann Abbott I am excited about today's conference at the iHotel on the UIUC campus--  Responding to Immigrants: Bridging Research and Practice to Meet the Needs of immigrants in New Growth Communities . My session is a workshop--"P artnering with the Community via Service Learning"--from 1:30 - 3:00 in the Humanities Room. ( You can see the entire conference schedule here .) It will be a "how-to" workshop, designed specifically for people who want to start a CSL course or program. Community representatives will be welcomed as well; sometimes the initiative for a CSL course comes from the community itself. Here are some materials that I will share during the workshop. SPAN 232 "Spanish in the Community" Syllabus / Course calendar SPAN 332 "Spanish and Social Entrepreneurship" Syllabus / Course calendar Course quiz, contracts and permissions Wiki student sign-up Wiki student work log Community-based team projects Spani...

Team: Megan, Alicia, Katie and Jaclyn ¿Qué? Nuestro grupo tuvimos un proceso largo llegando al concepto de nuestro proyecto, pero finalmente decidimos hacer un proyecto creando videos informativos sobre diferente formas de tecnología.   Nosotros enfocamos en como crear una cuenta de Skype. Primero, tomamos un foto de cada paso y explicamos en español que necesita hacer para crear su propio cuenta.   Incluimos como cargar Skype, crear una cuenta, comprar dinero para llamar a un teléfono fijo y como llamar otra gente con una cuenta de Skype. Trabajamos juntas para crear el video y dividimos los objetivos de la propuesta para que cada persona harían la misma cantidad de trabajo.   Creando un video fue muy divertido, también hicimos todo con la meta que es fácil para entender.   Con el video, vamos a ponerlo en un blog que creamos con la esperanza que las próximas clases continúan haciendo videos de diferente tecnologías para el consumidor.  --Megan ...

Melissa, Brendan and Carlos What? La Línea es una línea de apoyo para inmigrantes en lachampaign-urbana comunidad. Desde cuando empezó su misión ha cambiado un poco.Al principio La Línea fue dirigido hacia inmigrantes hispanos, pero hemosdescubierto que hay muchos inmigrantes en nuestra comunidad que necesitanapoyo, no solamente hispanos. Por eso La Línea ha decidido ampliar su alcancepara ayudar a más gente. El problema que tiene La Línea es que mucha gente nosabe de nosotros y por eso nuestro grupo quiere hacer un video para informar a másgente de lo que hace La Línea. Nuestrovideo será muy corto y casi como un comercial para La Línea. --Melissa So what? La Línea Latina is a helpline that connects people,specifically immigrants, with contacts and resources within the community. Itis also dedicated to social justice. La Línea is a collaboration betweenUniversity of Illinois students and the University YMCA with the goal ofbridging the gap between the Latino community ...