Spanish & Illinois

by Ann Abbott Teaching Spanish community service learning (CSL) requires that you ask students really good questions. There is so much unexamined information that most people carry around in their heads about languages, lanugage learning, immigrants and immigration. You have to ask good questions to cut through all of that. However, more and more in my teaching and lesson planning, I am drawn to creating activities that require students to formulate their own questions. And when they have to ask them to a real person--a classmate, the instructor, a roommate, their family members, the community partner, etc.--all the better! So I was particularly struck by list of questions in a recent blog post that I read about helping freshmen learn time management skills from upper classmen .  Encourage students early in the term to “interview” an upper classman about how they handle college demands and manage their time. Here are some questions they may wish to ask: How and when do y...

The Frances Nelson Dental Center provides important care to un- or under-insured individuals. by Ann Abbott Sometimes students have difficulty choosing just one community partner with which to do their community service learning work. Some of my best students have broad interests and a strong desire to have a broad impact. I almost always say no. It's really difficult to for even the most well-meaning students to work at two different places in the same semester. I usually encourage them to take the follow-up course--SPAN 332 Spanish & Entrepreneurship--and try their hand at a new community partner organization. Some students do it successfully, though. And benefit from it. Read about one student who worked at  at ECIRMAC and also at Frances NelsonDental Center . "I learned many transferable skills that are relevant to the medical field, like empathy, communication skills, patience, how to multitask, and how to work with people from different cultures. I als...