Mar 21, 2015
Spoiler alert: It’s mastery, membership, and meaning.
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Spoiler alert: It’s mastery, membership, and meaning.
La mejor manera de decir es hacer; the better way to say is to do.
Jose Marti, Cuban poet and freedom hero
The measure of Shira Korn's fellowship was simple: a conversation. For the first time ever, she conducted parent/teacher conferences this fall without the presence of a translator.
Shira teaches at Community Health Academy of the Heights in New York City. The school is made up of 93% Latino students and of 34% ELL students and yet most of the teachers do not speak Spanish. She used her FFT grant to participate in Common Ground International, a Spanish immersion program in Costa Rica that improves educators' language skills and cultural understanding of Latino culture and makes learning more accessible for Latino students and their families.
"As I got off the plane in San Jose, I was met by a Taxi driver who asked me if I spoke Spanish. “Un pocito,” I replied, holding my thumb and my index finger together to indicate the littlest bit. On my return journey, I traveled by public bus and the man next to me asked if I was from Mexico after speaking to me about my travels. Besides improving my Spanish, I have become more sensitive to Latino culture and developed an understanding of the insecurity associated with interactions with unfamiliar material that will help me support my students, ELL and otherwise, in their study of Physics."
In addition to her successful interactions with parents, Shira applies her fellowship to student interaction. as well, including:
Hanging pictures in her classroom of inspirational quotes in Spanish and English taken during her fellowship to increase conversation her experiences;
Integrating stories of her struggles to use language into lessons about problem solving in Physics
Making a word wall with both Spanish and English definitions of words and requiring all students to learn and use vocabulary in both languages
Writing syllabus in both Spanish and English
Writing a take home manual about how parents can support their students academically based on a handout provided by several Costa Rican High Schools.
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