Span 301S: Service Learning in the Chicano/Latino Community
Course Description:
This course is part of your Spanish language learning experience, and offers you the opportunity to interact in a personal way with members of the local Latino community, thereby enriching your understanding of Hispanic cultures and the Spanish language. As a community-based learning experience, the course provides students with career-related experience working collaboratively with community agencies to address community concerns / issues.
This course is part of your Spanish language learning experience, and offers you the opportunity to interact in a personal way with members of the local Latino community, thereby enriching your understanding of Hispanic cultures and the Spanish language. As a community-based learning experience, the course provides students with career-related experience working collaboratively with community agencies to address community concerns / issues.
Course Reflective Narrative:
Service Learning in the Latino Community is one of the core courses in the Spanish Major. By taking this course I was given the opportunity to connect with my community. CSUMB has many community partners where students can decide which site they would like to serve at, and the requirement is at least 30 hours of service by the end of the semester. For the Spanish Major we needed to pick a site that had a large latino impact, as well as a site where we could utilize our Spanish-speaking skills.
I chose to do my service in Salinas at El Sausal Middle School, where myself and several other peers acted as mentors/tutors for the 7th and 8th grade AVID Students. While I was doing about six hours of service a week at El Sausal, I also attended this class twice a week where we learned more about issues impacting the latino community in our area and everyone in the class was given an opportunity to talk about things happening at their service site so that we could all learn from one another.
One of the projects we did to demonstrate this was what we call a "Community Scan". For this project we had to show that we had made an effort to go into the community we were serving in and get to know local restaurants and important locations, as well as interview and talk with people in the community to hear what they had say about it. We also had to find, through our sites, major social justice issues in the community so that we could connect how our service affects these issues and how we can be part of it even after our service is done.
I linked my "Community Scan" presentation below.
Service Learning in the Latino Community is one of the core courses in the Spanish Major. By taking this course I was given the opportunity to connect with my community. CSUMB has many community partners where students can decide which site they would like to serve at, and the requirement is at least 30 hours of service by the end of the semester. For the Spanish Major we needed to pick a site that had a large latino impact, as well as a site where we could utilize our Spanish-speaking skills.
I chose to do my service in Salinas at El Sausal Middle School, where myself and several other peers acted as mentors/tutors for the 7th and 8th grade AVID Students. While I was doing about six hours of service a week at El Sausal, I also attended this class twice a week where we learned more about issues impacting the latino community in our area and everyone in the class was given an opportunity to talk about things happening at their service site so that we could all learn from one another.
One of the projects we did to demonstrate this was what we call a "Community Scan". For this project we had to show that we had made an effort to go into the community we were serving in and get to know local restaurants and important locations, as well as interview and talk with people in the community to hear what they had say about it. We also had to find, through our sites, major social justice issues in the community so that we could connect how our service affects these issues and how we can be part of it even after our service is done.
I linked my "Community Scan" presentation below.
communityscan.pdf | |
File Size: | 157 kb |
File Type: |