Field Experience - getting outside your bubble

I took my 8th grade kiddos on a field trip the other day and it was awesome. Leading students on a day's adventure to places they wouldn't normally go always proves to be rewarding!

We started off by visiting the Levine Museum of the New South where the exhibit NUEVOlution just opened this past weekend. It's a wonderful exhibit chock full of interactive activities, historical to current-day information, and most importantly - actual community members and leaders from our immediate area. The exhibit also highlights the works of 14 regional artists - one of which is my husband! :) When I scheduled this field trip a few months ago, my husband had not yet signed on to do a piece for NUEVOlution - so it was a nice treat for my students to see his work as a part of this great exhibit!
NUEVOlution starts with the history of Hispanics in the US, reminding us all that way back when native Mexicans, often referred to as 'Chicanos' today, established much of the southwest - way before their Anglo counterparts came along. From there, we are taken on a journey through the decades showing us how the Latino population has grown in the US. An in-depth look at immigration leads into a fantastic flow chart detailing the complicated path to citizenship. Food, faith, activism, social justice, stereotypes, dance, music, etc. are all explored throughout NUEVOlution - commenting that it's comprehensive would be an understatement. NUEVOlution will be on display through October 30, 2016. A whole year's time to enjoy it - I've already been three times in the past seven days!

The only thing I could comment that NUEVOlution lacks in highlighting is the millions of people like me living in the United States! According to the Pew Hispanic Research Center, "Spanish is spoken by more non-Hispanics in U.S. homes than any other non-English language." I am a direct by-product of this "nuevolution." I am not Hispanic, but a Spanish speaker (more or less from childhood) because of an immigrant family I became close to - which then led me to meet and marry a Colombian native. We speak Spanish in the home, my oldest child is completely bilingual, and my 3 year old is speaking-Spanish only! This demographic speaks volumes as to how our country's meshing of cultures is actually taking place. In 2013, it was reported there are 2.8 million of us (non-Hispanics) fully embracing the culture and using Spanish in the home!

"An Immigrant's Tale" by Nico Amortegui

After the Levine, I took the students to the International House (in Plaza-Midwood) so they could attend a real conversation hour. All were very nervous to say the least, but I assured them getting outside their comfort zone wouldn't kill them! If you're not familiar with the International House, it has been around since 1981 and provides assistance to immigrants and foreign-born citizens in our area. They carry out numerous programs, but one I like to promote is their FREE Language Conversation Hours, which they offer weekly and in 10 different languages.
Upon arrival, students first met Raul - the conversation circle's leader. Raul is an octogenarian from Chile and has been leading this weekly Spanish conversation hour for as long as I can remember. He may not remember me, but I remember him! :)
Raul and I chatted it up for a few minutes while my wide-eyed students attempted to calm their nerves! If you've never participated in a public convo hour, there are a few basic rules: must stay in target language, no judgement, and no politics! For the most part, there's a committed group of retired attendees, lunch hour business professionals, and ever so often teachers / students. While my kiddos entered with much trepidation, they left feeling confident and inspired! That is what I love about conversation hour! No matter your level - novice or advanced - the environment is so welcoming that everyone leaves feeling accomplished!

We ended this wonderful day by eating at Sabor Latin Street Grill, and it was yummy! The students tried arepas rellenas, empanadas, mazorca, and churros - and they LOVED it all!

The opportunity to share with my students a little bit of my world (the places I go, the things I eat, the people I know) and for them to trust me in leading them outside their comfort zone is special. They (I hope) learn and grow from such an experience; and I in turn, get to experience the things I love through a fresh lens, learning new perspectives each time.

This is what teaching and learning is all about - the experience!

Anxiety in the foreign language classroom

It's that time of year when I know I have a handful of new-to-Spanish students coming my way and they are more than likely dreading my class!

When you've never studied foreign language and you also happen to be an adolescent - anxiety runs high! Aside from just being uncomfortable, this is what the profession refers to as "affective filters." Identified and described by Stephen Krashen decades ago, affective filters are mental blocks that prohibit comprehensible input and negatively impact one's ability to thrive in a foreign language setting. The piece that many may not realize is that they can affect novice learners and advanced learners alike.

When your affective filters run high, your language learning ability is low. Here they are at a glance:
- anxiety or stress from not recognizing what you hear
- embarrassment, low self-esteem, low confidence
- fear of making a mistake
- fear of speaking in front of peers (or colleagues)
- fear of failure
- fear of not being able to speak with perfection or flow

All of these things can manifest themselves in the classroom setting and are easily recognizable during any Q&A activity I've ever done or observed. The confident student doesn't think twice upon being asked something in the target language and simply responds, but the student who lets the affective filters get the best of them shuts down or shuts off actual listening (and thus comprehension). These students answer with an interrogative or can't answer at all because they have convinced themselves they couldn't do it... before they even started or attempted to.

While all of this is quite normal, allowing affective filters to get the best of you can make or break the classroom experience. Check out these tips in taming your affective filters:

Tips - they may sound simple, but they work!
1) Remain positive with a "can-do" attitude - perhaps easier said than done, but positivity works!
2) Keep Open Ears - don't shut down your brain or shut off your hearing from actually listening!
3) Mind over matter - psyche yourself into it! Focus on what you can do, read, hear, recognize, etc.
4) Trust your teacher! Good foreign language teachers don't expect perfection - they simply want effort! Meet them half way and your experience in foreign language could go from scary to amazing! Your teacher knows you are learning and you don't know everything - that is okay! If you sit in an immersion style class and participate and walk away only getting 50% or 30% - that's okay too - the better question is did you try? Did you continue participating even though you didn't understand 100%? If the answer is yes, then you did your job! Keep it up and comprehensible input will only increase while anxiety decreases, and that 50% will rise to 80%!

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Second Language Acquisition research shows that just putting on a (genuinely) happy face can significantly impact your performance in learning a foreign language.

If you're just starting to learn Spanish (or any other foreign language) and you're 13 or OLDER - then your chances are already down by half! Sorry if this is discouraging, but the optimal gap of acquiring & retaining foreign language is from birth to age 7. This means, once kids hit puberty, their chances decrease significantly and are no better than a 40 or 60 year old in learning a language. Therefore, it's even more important to go into the Spanish learning experience (whether it be a class, workshop, or professional development) with an OPEN mind, OPEN ears, and a SMILE! :)

Colombian Thoughts & Reflections

This calendar year, I have been fortunate enough to have visited Costa Rica (for the 5th time), Mexico (for the 6th time) & Colombia - my husband’s native country - (also for the 6th time.) In all, I have spent about 3 months’ time in Colombia. I received the biggest compliment from my sister-in-law the other day.. She said, “I always forget you’re from here.” While I am not rescinding upon my Southern roots, I have assimilated into Latino culture - and more appropriately - Colombian culture. It has only made my life richer.

No matter how assimilated one is, there are naturally plenty of things that just happen differently in the States vs. other countries. Here are a few of those things that always get my attention when we head to Colombia:

1) How do you know you’ve arrived in South America? We get to bypass the masses and go first in line! Why? Because we have young children with one in a stroller! It’s marvelous. Pregnant women, disabled people, families with babies and young children - ALL get a “preferential” line to themselves. This means we skip ahead of all the long lines waiting to get through security, waiting to get on airplane, waiting to get through customs, waiting, waiting, waiting! When I was pregnant, I relished in this special treatment, but now as I am traveling with a 5 year old and a two year old, it is a blessing for sure!!
The special treatment doesn’t stop there. We fly Avianca - a Colombian airline that still gives its customers all the perks for free! Remember those days of air travel? Like a dream long faded away, Avianca still provides all the services at no extra charge. This means each one of our tickets comes with two free checked bags, two free carry-ons, free extra carry-ons (car seat, stroller), free hot meal, free alcohol. FREE alcohol! Every seat has a TV screen. There’s no better way to travel with children - and, did I mention I had free wine while in route to Bogota?! It’s wonderful to say the least.
On the way to Bogota, the attendants started meal service from the back toward the front skipping quite a few rows in between. I inquired about the process and was informed they feed all the kids first, then go back and do the adults. Come again?! Well, how thoughtful, how accommodating - to really everyone on board - keeping kids quiet, fed and taken care of first! It is the simple things airline companies can do that benefit everyone around, making the flight experience much more enjoyable for all.
If you have to fly into any big city in South America, I recommend Avianca for sure. On a random side note, if you’ve never seen Avianca flight attendants - you can spot them a mile away. Much like that scene from Catch Me If You Can, when the flight attendants are walking down the corridor forming a line across… The Avianca crew seems to do the same! They wear these very regal-looking, scarlet red hats and capes that appear to be straight from the 1920s. It’s a fun photo op : )

2) Is bigger always better? One of my favorite things to do when I travel abroad is to visit the supermarkets. In most of the Latin American countries I have visited, the first very noticeable thing is the size of beverages, snacks, etc. All is a quarter to half size SMALLER than products sold here in the US. I find this interesting because I distinctly remember when I was kid how big product sizes were becoming. Remember when the BIG GULP cup came out?
Cigarette cartons come in what would be 1/2 cartons for the US; the XL size of a potato chip bag is no where near as big as the “family size” we are use to; and the largest soda you can buy is ONE liter. And so, it makes me wonder if the typical Latin family actually consumes less on a regular basis compared to US families. Is there a correlation between consumption & size of packaging?

3) Basic kitchen necessities depends on the culture! We rented a nice, little apartment in ‘tierra caliente’ for 5 days to take a little break from BOG. If you are reading this and you aren’t familiar with the climate in Colombia - it is all microclimates. This means it could be 60, cloudy, cool, & no humidity in Bogota, but take a little drive down the mountain range and just two hours away it’s sunny, very hot & humid. The latter describes 'tierra caliente.' In this furnished apartment in Anapoima, we had a kitchen with basic necessities. I took a picture of them because “basic needs” in Colombia was strikingly different from basic needs here in the US, I thought. I imagine if I rented a furnished apartment in the US, I would expect to find a can opener, a corkscrew, and coffee maker. This is what we had:

Do you know which one is used to make coffee? :)

The takeaway:
I love the fact my children get to be a part of two worlds. While it took me years before I could say I was “bilingual” - my girls were given this gift from birth. It’s amazing (and I don’t use that word often) to see them interact with their great-grandparents in Bogota. While I love being in Colombia, its culture, and its people; Bogota is a HUGE city that I would not want to live in permanently. Being there, even for just a few days, one realizes very quickly how hard it is to get around and get things done. Have a dentist appointment scheduled? Well, consider that your whole day eaten up! Over the course of our 3 week stay, we waited in line one hour in the taxi line at the train station; and easily spent hours in a taxi trying to get to any given destination. The Transmilenio (above ground subway) is no different. Going from uptown to downtown still takes a solid 45 minutes to over an hour depending on time of day.
One day we decided to take the girls to see the new movie, Inside Out (‘Intensamente’ en español). We chose the 3:30 matinee thinking it would be less crowded on that Wed afternoon. We were wrong. It’s Bogota, there’s millions of people! We waited in line forever, not sure if we could even get tickets, but ended up with the last few available. By the way, want to know what time the movies play and what’s showing? You still call the theater! Remember doing that?

Being in Bogota makes me realize how easy it is to get things done in the US. Many still pay their bills in person! For some, that’s the only way to do it and others simply don’t trust the online systems. My husband’s grandmother pays all of her bills in person! Think about how much time it takes to arrive at each place vs. online or even by phone (which also doesn’t happen!) I think there is a trust in the mail system or online bill-pay that we have in the US that other countries simply do not. If you’re one to ponder quality of life and those happy indexes that come out each year, I would think spending countless hours simply trying to take care of business would eat away at your happy levels and increase your stress levels. Despite this, Colombians consistently rank in the top 10 (every time those reports come out) for being the happiest people on Earth. I can certainly attest to their outlook on life. As a whole, Colombians are very positive people and with that, I hope this post was mildly entertaining or slightly informative… now, find some Colombian friends & see for yourself what ‘zest for life’ is!