For many students, Spanish 205, a service learning course, is their first experience balancing college course work and the commitment of service. These students work with families at the Durham Community Food Pantry or tutor elementary and middle schoolers at La Iglesia Emmanuel.
When I applied for the Bacca Fellowship, I thought I would be teaching a course on Caribbean Diaspora. However, I soon found out that I would not be teaching the course for a while, so I would have to change what kind of project I would be working on during the two semesters with my cohort. I decided that I really wanted to strengthen the community outreach in my Spanish Service-Learning class and needed to find a better way to connect the course content with the community engagement.
Spanish 205 (advanced intermediate) is challenging course because we cover all the grammar and lexical structures that Spanish 204 course does, but also need to spend class time figuring out the complexity and logistics of community engagement. For many students, it is their first experience balancing college course work and the commitment of service. These students work with families at the Durham Community Food Pantry or tutor elementary and middle schoolers at La Iglesia Emmanuel. So, we decided that we could do some outreach with this age group and making short videos for young people would be the perfect blend of creativity and practice for their language skills.
I workshopped the project with my amazing cohort, and they helped me understand more clearly my desired outcomes. This group is very creative and artistic, so they provided me with suggestions about storyboarding and collaboration. However, this project is technology orientated so, I knew I needed extra support. On of my group members told me about the media center in the Bryant Center and I contacted Steve Toback, who runs the lab. Mr. Toback created a sample video for the students and then zoomed in the class to explain the adobe software. Students were grateful for the tech support and the opportunity to ask specific questions. In groups of three, students produced amusing and informative videos related to the course content.
I just found out that I am going to teach the Caribbean Diaspora course in the fall. I am excited to be able to incorporate a video project into the course work for this course as well.
IMAGE CREDIT: Eileen Anderson
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Eileen Anderson
