Fellowship Paper

I. The Dilemma: What is Culture?

"Languages are keys that open doors to new worlds and new cultures," my granddad told me when I was a frustrated nine year-old girl trying to read a fairytale in German. While I didn't understand what he meant then, I do now. At age nineteen I decided to become an English teacher. Four years ago I left Chile, and today I'm teaching my native language as a foreign language to American middle and high school students.

Whether English or Spanish, French or Chinese, one of the biggest dilemmas that foreign language teachers face is how to integrate culture into a language class. The difficulty lies in integrating culture in a way that students learn about relevant cultural aspects while developing language skills such as reading, writing, speaking, and listening.

Yet a deeper question needs to be addressed, especially when teaching Spanish: What is culture? Spanish is spoken in over 15 countries. The language embraces not only the mainstream of each culture but also indigenous roots. How do we Spanish teachers recognize and honor the diversity embraced by the language yet integrate into our teaching the concept of a single language? Is there anything like a single Spanish-speaking-culture?

Throughout this paper, I will refer to Spanish; it is the language I teach. Nonetheless, it's use parallels that of other languages. English, French, Portuguese, for example, are also official languages adopted by other countries, and therefore the individual language reflects different cultures. I remember that as an English teacher in Chile, my colleagues and I usually talked about cultural differences between the UK, the USA, Australia, etc and how we might reflect them in our practice. This paper is about one successful experience integrating the arts and culture into a unit. I hope it serves as a starting point from which to develop cultural units in a language class.

II. Teaching Spanish at Parker.

At the Francis W. Parker Charter Essential School all students begin in Division I, and the school sees each division as a two-year experience. In Spanish we follow the same approach. My younger students are 7th and 8th graders; my older students are 9th and a few 10th graders. Their level in the language is basic to intermediate. At Parker students are assessed in 5 language skill areas: Speaking, Writing, Listening, Reading, and Culture. Also, when developing curriculum, Spanish teachers incorporate a cultural component into every unit. Therefore, at Parker culture serves as the central axis that unites the process of learning Spanish.

My effort to create and develop a unit that embraces a meaningful cultural topic and incorporates language content, has been a journey of trial and error. In this search, the question: WHAT IS CULTURE? seemed, at times, impossible to answer. There are so many interesting artistic, historic, and geographic milestones in each Spanish speaking country, but I wanted to integrate more than one country, more than one model I wanted one unit to reflect the cultural richness and diversity inherent in the Spanish language. In other words, I wanted to find elements of cultures that united all Latin American countries and Spain. In addition, I wanted my students to learn to enjoy communicating and speaking Spanish.

My first attempt was to create a cultural unit that would serve as an attractive starting point. During this unit, in order to engage students and mostly to avoid and to prevent students' anxiety, the use of English was acceptable. The product of this attempt was the unit "Una Leyenda Quiche." In this unit, the students were asked to read a Quiche legend in Spanish and in English. Then, they had to create their own legend in English, and using their legend, write a children's book in Spanish. While this unit was successful and students enjoyed it, it did not meet my expectations. Although the students used the Spanish language (its written form), and they learned about the Quiche-Mayas, they did not communicate in Spanish, nor did they identify with the topic--the concept of deity in Quiche-Maya culture.

A second step in this journey was to develop units centered on culture but carried out in Spanish. The goal here was to have students work on one of the Spanish language skill areas while exposing them to cultural content and elements of the topicWho were the Incas? Where was their empire? What are the theories about how Macchu-Picchu was built? And what was the purpose of it? An example of a unit was "Macchu-Picchu: Una Visión Poética." In this unit, students learn about the sacred Inca city as they read poems by Pablo Neruda. The unit focuses on one of the language skill areas, reading, as well as on culture.

These units, still centered on culture, felt more successful because English was eliminated, and the students learned more Spanish. Nonetheless, I was not completely satisfied. I felt more time could have been devoted to the cultural aspect of the unit. For instance, throughout the unit "Macchu-Picchu: Una Visión Poética," the students developed excellent reading strategies and enjoyed the poetic approach to Machu-Pichu, but they were not using (speaking) Spanish or really developing ownership of the topic--Macchu Picchu, the sacred city of the Incas.

After researching, reading, and talking to colleagues on how to integrate culture, I decided to try a more holistic approach. The first step was to find a very general but rich and student-friendly topic. The arts revealed themselves to be the best topic around which to build such a unit. And the idea of Sinopsis de un Artista as a unit began to grow.

III. The Unit: "Sinopsis de un Artista"

In the unit "Sinopsis de un Artista" students learned about the ARTS. They learned vocabulary related to the arts, particularly painting. They learned three language functions: how to express their opinions, how to ask for opinions, and how to agree and disagree. They also learned how to edit a text in Spanish, and they reviewed present tense, past simple, and acentos. All of these language structures were linked to the life and work of three famous painters: Frida Kahlo, Pablo Picasso, and Salvador Dalí. By studying each painter's identity, life, and work, the students discovered how each artist reflected his/her cultural heritage and how each artist influenced modern art. At the end of the unit, the students demonstrated their cultural and language acquisition through two project-based assessments. The first focused on writing and the other on speaking. It was essential that students demonstrate their cultural understanding of the artists and the specific periods in which they worked. See Appendix A for the Unit Overview.

IV. Implementation and Obstacles

In designing the "Sinopsis de un Artista" unit, my goal was to provide the language structures and vocabulary necessary for students to express their opinions, as well as the tools necessary for them to do research in Spanish at a basic-to-intermediate learning level. The arts is a topic that children and teenagers enjoy very much. The arts by themselves are a language; art pieces express emotions, tell stories, capture moments, etc. They are a great hook! Out of all art disciplines, I chose painting. There are two reasons behind my choice:
1. There are many world famous Latin American and Spanish painters.
2. Painting is easier, cleaner, faster, and cheaper than other art forms (sculpture, clay, murals, etc.), and students can create their own paintings in class and/or as homework.

The Francis Parker Charter Essential School gives teachers a lot of freedom to create curriculum, which was a great advantage for me. I knew I could spend two and a half months on a unit; therefore, I decided that the first week would be a week of fun, games, and review. We played games like hangman, Lingo-Bingo (with adjectives), crossword puzzles, word family trees, etc., using vocabulary the students already knew--colors, adjectives, verbs, shapes, numbers, clothes, countries, and capitals, for example. That week I also gave my students a list of core vocabulary related to art that I culled from the different readings and dictations they would do.

In the second and third weeks the students learned about Frida Kahlo. I did not want to lecture about Frida Kahlo, or give them a reading about her life, I wanted my students to get involved and interested in her work. I began by introducing Frida Kahlo through her paintings. I gave each of my students a postcard with Kahlo's work on it and asked them to observe the painting and try to answer the questions on the board in Spanish. The questions were the following:

a. ¿Qué ves en el cuadro? (What do you see in the painting?)

b. ¿Qué colores hay? (What colors are there?)

c. ¿Hay personas en el cuadro? ¿Cuántas? (Are there people in the painting? How many?)

d. ¿Qué ropa visten las personas? (What are they wearing?)

e. ¿Hay animales en el cuadro? ¿Cuántos? ¿Qué animales hay? (Are there animals in the painting? How many? What animals?)

f. ¿Hay plantas (flores/ árboles)? (Are there plants [flowers / trees]?)

g. ¿Cómo es el cuadro? (triste, alegre, usa adjetivos para describir) (How is the painting?[sad, happy, use adjectives to describe it])

The students worked in pairs and described the paintings orally by answering the questions. These questions were very simple; therefore the students were able to respond to them without first writing down answers. When they realized they were speaking Spanish without a lot of preparation, they became very excited, and a many of them volunteered to present the paintings in front of the class. After each student presented, I wrote on the board three means of expressing opinion. These final sentences required a subjective responses. I used these on purpose, to introduce different ways to express opinion in Spanish:

En mi opinión la pintura es (In my opinion)

Estoy de acuerdo contigo. (I agree with you.)

No estoy de acuerdo contigo. (I disagree with you.)

I then asked a few students to express their opinion using the statements on the board.

Both of these activities helped students feel confident about using Spanish with one another. These activities also triggered various reactions among students--ranging from disliking Kahlo's work, to enjoying it very much. At this point, students also wanted to learn more about this Mexican woman painter. The second step began here: research in Spanish. The idea of doing research is not appealing to teenagers, regardless of the language used. However, the use of the Internet is very attractive to them, and technology is an area in which teenagers feel very confident. I told my students that in order to find out more about this woman, we were going to use Internet in Spanish. They liked the idea. I provided the students with a tiny list of words related to computers in Spanish, a list of Web sites in Spanish about Frida Kahlo, and eleven questions--to focus students on finding relevant information about Kahlo's life and work. This is when I faced the first major obstacle to implement this unit: accessibility to computers.

Even though teachers are free to develop innovative and creative curriculum at the Francis Parker Charter Essential School, there are limitations in access to technology. It is a six year-old school without a computer lab. We had to use the computers in the library, which required making reservations in advance and sticking to pretty strict timing. I struggled with the fact that my classes could not spend more than fifty minutes at a time researching. I dealt with the lack of computers by having students work in pairs and take notes on important information. Aware of the limitation, students used time productively.

The lack of a Spanish resource center where students could access books on the topic was another obstacle. In order to deal with the shortage of reference books and pictures, I utilized inter-library loans, and I borrowed books from a colleague in a college Arts and Humanities department. Students also shared resources as much as possible. Another challenge was the fact that I taught in two classrooms; I had a cart with my teaching materials, so I carried the books with me in the spirit of a mobile library. It actually was a good experience; the students had access to the books whenever they needed them.

After researching on the Internet and sharing the answers with the class, the students had a very good idea of who Frida Kahlo was. To be sure that everyone had the same basic knowledge of her, as well as to practice reading comprehension, I assigned an in-class reading on Frida Kahlo's life. The students worked in groups finding new vocabulary, answering comprehension questions, and doing a chronology of Kahlo's life. After this, we discussed the symbolism in Kahlo's paintings, especially the influence of an early bus accident, her marriage to Diego Rivera, and her love of nature. Another assigned activity was an interview of Frida Kahlo using the information they had learned and the various means to express their opinions. As a final activity, the students created their own Autorretratos (Self-Portraits). They wrote an artistic statement in Spanish, drew their self-portraits using markers and colored pencils, and finally presented their Autorretrato in Spanish to the class.

I used the work we did on Frida Kahlo as and example, so when it came time to study Picasso and Dalí, the students were able to work in groups and do pair work. I could then act as a coach and helper.

During the forth week, I introduced students to Pablo Picasso, following the same approach, but giving them more freedom and also more responsibility to find out information about the artist. I gave them postcards with Picasso's paintings, and they talked about them and presented the paintings in front of the class. They researched the paintings and Picasso's life using the Internet and books. Since Picasso was such a prolific painter, I wanted them to focus on a period they liked the most. It was important to me that they understood the unique characteristics of Picasso, so I provided them with a brief biography on the artist. I also wanted the students to understand how artists use art to express their feelings as well as their political views. Because it is an excellent example of a political statement from Picasso, we studied GUERNICA, as a class, a bit more in depth than any other painting, and we talked about symbolism and the impact of wars in Picasso's life. As a final activity, we compared Kahlo and Picasso.

The last artist that we studied was Salvador Dalí. We followed the same approach as with Kahlo and Picasso, but this time I provided students with only a biography, and I coached them through the whole process.

As we neared the end of the unit, the students were prepared to do independent research on a Spanish-speaking painter of their choice. To facilitate the research, I provided a list of ten painters and Internet sites where they could find information. The students spent one class looking at the different painters and chose one. Their writing project was to create a brief biography (see Appendix B), including the most relevant information about the painter, a description of at least two paintings, and an artistic statement. Their speaking project was to present all of this information as if they were the artist at a press conference (see Appendix C), answering questions from the audience.

V. Transferability of the Unit

When developing this unit I kept in mind that I wanted my students to communicate using all the language skill areas (speaking, listening, reading, writing) and the understanding of culture they had developed in Spanish class. However, there was an emphasis in speaking and writing because I assessed my students formally in these two areas. In class the students also worked on comprehension in both reading and listening.

The unit Sinopsis de un Artista is aligned with the Massachusetts Curriculum Framework in Foreign Languages and it fulfilled four out of the eight standards:

Learning Standard 1: Students of modern languages will converse in a language other than English to provide and obtain information, express feelings and emotions, and exchange opinions.

Learning Standard 2: Students will understand and interpret ideas and information written or spoken in a language other than English.

Learning Standard 3: Students of modern languages will write and speak in a language other than English to present information, concepts, and ideas on a variety of topics.

Learning Standard 4: Students will demonstrate an understanding of the traditions, perspectives, practices, and products of the culture studied, including human commonalities as reflected in history, literature, and the visual and performing arts.

If teachers have enough flexibility and freedom, they can use the unit as developed. However, it is my understanding that many schools require the use of books when teaching languages. The activities I used can be used as corollary activities, or as cultural points incorporated into the study of a variety of topics, as for example:

• Artes y artistas (arts and artists)
• Pintores latinoamericanos / españoles (Latin American and Spaniard painters)
• El Museo (the museum)
• Estudios sobre México / España (Mexico and Spain)
• Expresar Opiniones (expressing opinion)

Even though the unit was designed to assess speaking and writing, students could also be assessed on their comprehension in reading and listening. The grammatical structures taught and reviewed in this unit are:

• Present and past simple tense
• Sentence and question structure
• Descriptions (use of adjectives)
• Agreement (gender and number agreement)
• Vocabulary related to arts.

VI. Conclusion

At the end of the year one of my students told me, "The Frida Kahlo unit was my favorite. I feel that I learned so much Spanish." To me, the best compliments come from students. I feel especially successful when my students are excited about their improvement in language use and are interested in learning more about the language and the cultures that the Spanish language embraces. This unit was very successful because throughout it I could see the students' interest increasing. They wanted to learn more about the artists, and they wanted to learn how to better express themselves in Spanish.

I believe that the elements that made Sinopsis de un Artista a successful unit are:

• TIME: I had plenty of time to plan and teach this unit. I think that in order to help students feel confident about one cultural topic in a second language, teachers need to spend a lot of time on it.
• TOPIC: The topic of art is appealing to children and teenagers. Using art as the platform to study language motivated students; they were excited to learn about the artists they heard about.
• JOY: Finally, I believe the most important element in the success of the unit is the fact that I enjoyed every class as much as my students did.
  

Verónica Zepeda Ramírez was born in Valparaíso, Chile. Since she was a child she has been studying languages, first German, then English. At age 19, she decided to become an English teacher. She did her undergraduate studies at the Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Chile. In 1997, Verónica left Chile to earn her Master's Degree at Kent State University, Ohio. After graduation she moved to Boston, MA. There, she taught Spanish at Francis W. Parker Charter Essential for two years. Now, she is starting the Spanish program at Mission Hill School in Roxbury, MA.

Overview:
In this unit the students will learn how to express opinions, how to agree and disagree with someone else's opinion, and how to argue a point specifically in the topic of ARTS. In this unit the students will be introduced to the work of Frida Kahlo, Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dalí.


Week 1: ¿Qué es el ARTE?

Escribir (Writing) Sinopsis de un Pintor

Description
You will work on this project during class. You will be given a list of painters, a list of Internet resources, and a model of the project.

Objective
You will write a one page essay about a Latin American or Spanish painter. The essay must include the following components:

Brief biography

2 reasons for choosing that artist

3 - 4 examples of artwork (painting or sculpture)

1 artistic statement of one piece

Hablar (speaking) Conferencia de Prensa

Description
You will work on this project during class. You will be given a list of Internet resources, a list of sample questions, and rehearsal time.

Objective

You will make a 5 - 7 minute presentation on your painter. (You will pretend that you are the artist). Reading or memorization will not be allowed. In the presentation you must include:

Introduction and greetings

Motivations / reasons for being a painter

Presentation of 3 / 4 pieces

Statement about 1 favorite piece (could be an anecdote related to it)

Visuals

Q & A section

Students in the audience will play the role of journalists; you are expected to ask relevant questions at the end of the conference. (Asking creative and sensitive questions will be part of the speaking assessment.)

Carreño, Josephine (1996). Spanish Teacher's Book of Instant Word Games. The Center for Applied Research in Education.

Lucie-Smith, Edward. Arte Latinoamericano del Siglo XX. Ediciones Destino Thames and Hudson.

Miquel, Lourdes & Sans, Neus (1998). De Dos en Dos. Ejercicios interactivos de producción oral. Difusión. Centro de Investigación y Publicaciones de Español Lengua Extranjera. Barcelona, España.

Pacesetter, Spanish. ¿Nos conocemos? (1997-1998) College Entrance Examination Board and Educational Testing Serving.

Massachusetts Department of Education (1999) Massachusetts Curriculum Framework in Foreign Languages. Retrieved June 2001 from World Wide Web: http://www.doe.mass.edu/frameworks/current.html