From the Classroom to the Community!
FHIS Dr. Maria Carbonetti recently launched a blog introducing “Spanish for Community”, an initiative that promotes cultural understanding, intercultural communication and education through Community Based Experiential Learning.
Spanish for Community is a group of students (undergraduates with different levels of Spanish) coordinated by instructors, graduates, and collaborators engaged in linguistic-based projects for the Hispanic Community in Metro Vancouver and abroad. Through partnerships with community organizations and agencies, they work together to enrich and improve cultural understanding and integration for families and individuals whose first language is Spanish.
This initiative, created and currently coordinated by Dr. Maria Carbonetti, started as a curriculum reformulation of Conversational Spanish II in 2010, launching a version of the course to include a Community Serving Learning. Currently it also involves students in Advanced Spanish III and volunteers from other Spanish courses. Through projects for the local Hispanic community and local organizations related with the Hispanic communities abroad, the model integrates experiential components into the pedagogical approach.
The projects, in alignment with UBC broader community engagement, involve two-way direct interaction and co-teaching with clients and agencies that visit classes to provide between 2 to 4 hours of instructions to the students. Another important goal is to foster dialogue and collaboration between divisions at UBC, alumni, colleagues and students in other courses in the FHIS department.
Spanish for community receives the support of the Centre for Community Engaged Learning (CCEL), the Community Based Experiential Learning Office (CBEL), and the Department of French, Spanish, and Italian (FHIS), UBC.
To learn more about the Spanish for Community projects, visit: https://blogs.ubc.ca/spanishforcommunity
