I had a lofty goal: to get a group of our undergraduate students to set long-term civic engagement objectives for themselves. My proposal was a new Spanish course, named Engaging with the Latino Community Through Photography, with the purpose of adding applied social context to our curricula and helping our students in their own and personal path towards civic engagement. This course had as its final goal the creation of a Digital Archive of the local Latino Community, which is to remain as an online resource available publicly for this and future courses, as well as other academic groups and organizations that may find it useful. This course hoped to create a stimulating environment through discussions and photography projects, allowing students to form a learning community by having common goals and experiences. During this course, students participated in composing across media, and also public engagement.
I taught the students in this class three times a week, during which we focused on enhancing their Spanish language skills and reading about and discussing Latino culture. The Spanish language sessions prepared students to interact and engage with the local Spanish speaking community and to complete the 200 level of Spanish. These classes also prepared students to learn and develop intercultural competence skills in the classroom through specific cultural readings, a film, and discussions, which were applied during interactions with the local Latino community. Students wrote four different online forum reflections of their experience with the community and their language skills were tested during the semester. They were also required to write a final essay on their final project, which consisted of photographs, reflections, and a narration of the interview experience.
The photography component of the class included both cultural and technical skills. My students had five photography sessions throughout the semester, in which I taught them about the basics of photography and discussed how to tell someone’s story through images. Culturally, students were to learn about this community, including where individuals worked, lived, studied, and spent time. Then, students were to find people in this community to interview and photograph. The main focus was the interaction with local Latino culture. During the semester, I assigned several photography assignments to help them get comfortable with the cameras and to learn to use them effectively, as well as a final project. The final project consisted of a narrative of the interview and overall experience, and images taken. This work was added to a digital archive that is public and will hold the work of future students of this course. I hope that this digital archive is used for educational purposes by other programs and departments within Duke or other institutions in the future, such as Global Cultural Studies, Sociology, Civic Engagement Certificate, and Latino Studies.
Students presented their work in the form of a final presentation in Spanish at the Durham History Hub, to which the interviewees were invited as well as faculty from the Romance Studies Department and other colleagues. This location in Durham was specifically chosen so that the community would not feel intimidated to come to Duke’s campus. Instead, it would feel that we were coming to the community for a change.
Additionally, students’ photographic work will be displayed in the Allen Building in the Fall semester, from early September to early November. A small event will be organized to launch this show. Students will present and talk about the experience, this time in English.
Among some of my concerns starting this project were whether students would be up to the task of approaching the Latino community on their own and establishing a connection without me holding their hands during this process. The obvious reasons for my concern stemmed from their level of Spanish (intermediate) and also from the fact that most of my students were freshmen. It turned out that these were the students’ concerns, as well. Some of their first online forum reflection comments were, “I am nervous about talking completely in Spanish with these men and women,” but to my relief, there were also comments such as, “I believe that this experience will challenge my comfort zone and make me grow as a Spanish speaker and person.”
Despite my worry, given that students understood the main goals and shared my enthusiasm, I set off on this civic engagement assignment with great optimism. The truth is, there were many uncertainties with this project: interviewees were not always available during students’ free time; some individuals quit their job when students needed to set an appointment for the photography session; interviewees did not always respond to emails, as hoped by students; and in one case, the interviewee was not available for helping the student decide what picture represented him best.
My students came to learn that these uncertainties are the reality of this immigrant community. But I consider uncertainty as part of their learning process, too. It was stressful for some students and for myself at times, them insisting on not being able to reach their interviewees; me insisting that they needed to keep trying. As an instructor, it was hard not to be able to control every aspect of the civic engagement assignments, to let go and trust that my students would be able to pull through and make it happen on their own. In this sense, this course was an incredible learning experience for me, too. This shouldn’t surprise me really, as in my several years of teaching I have often felt that I was learning from my students as much as I hoped they were learning with me, and that it was important to let go and to trust them.
The LAMP program was essential for this project in a number of ways: what first comes to mind is the funds to purchase the cameras and other equipment, as well as the Durham History Hub rental and food for the end of semester event. It also paid for the printing for the Allen Building exhibit this fall. However, the LAMP program offered so much more than just the money; it offered the academic support of group discussions and suggestions, and the mentoring from experienced leaders that was invaluable for me professionally and for this course.
IMAGE CREDIT: Photo by Julian Santa Ana on Unsplash
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Graciela Vidal teaches different language levels of Spanish courses at Duke. Her areas of interest include development of content activities to increase language proficiency, applied linguistics, enhancement of critical thinking skills through language learning, instructional technology, intercultural communication, service learning and community engagement.
