¿Vamos a España?

EDIM 508: A trip to España

                As a World Language teacher, it is my responsibility to teach my students Spanish.  I present thousands of vocabulary words a year as well as numerous games to get students to conjugate verbs correctly.  I sometimes even teach them a lot about English grammar.  But being a World Language teacher has an even bigger responsibility.  The last of the five standards for World Language teaching is Cultures.   I know that the majority of my students will never step foot in a Spanish speaking country, yet most already have their impressions of Spanish speakers:  they all eat tacos and work in local restaurants, on  the weekends they attend bullfights and soccer games, they all have dark skin and dark hair, and they all speak very fast.  If they have never been to a Spanish speaking country, where do they get these ideas?

                Howard Gardner states, “From an early age, young people are influenced by what they see around them, what is rewarded, what is written about, what is ignored or disparaged” (pg. 142).  If they are learning this from the media, then it is now my ethical responsibility to use media to teach them the truth.  If they assume that what they may witness in their own communities is the way it is all over the world, then they must be shown the truth.  If their parents teach them only what they believe as true without any personal exposure, then I must expose them so that beliefs are based in reality.  It is a matter of respect and understanding for others’ similarities and differences.  “Ideally, the responsibility of engendering respect among different groups, and displaying that respect publicly should be distributed across the society.  Parents, neighbors, political leaders, religious leaders, the popular media, and the range of community organizations should all exhibit such respect” (Gardner, 109).

 Google Earth has offered me the means of taking all of my students to the actual countries we are studying without spending a penny.  By experiencing the cultures with their own eyes, maybe I can finally begin to fill their minds with what these countries and their citizens are truly like.  Being able to link pictures and videos to a particular topic permits cultural elements to be easily added while studying a region or country.  Students will be able to develop their respectful and ethical minds by basing their opinions and beliefs of others on facts and interactive experiences.