Category: CILC

2018 Community-College-Language Forum

Second
Community-College-Language Forum

May 4, 2018

The Graduate Center, CUNY

Co-sponsored by the
Center for Integrated Language Communities (CILC) and the
Modern Language Association (MLA)

Pre-conference workshops May 3, 2018

Keynote Speaker: Marty Abbott, Executive Director for ACTFL

Featured Presentation: Modern Language Association

Select papers of the conference will be published in a forthcoming issue of the ADFL Bulletin.

CILC

To learn more about CILC (the Center for Integrated Language Communities), a National Language Resource Center and the work of our current grant cycle, visit us at cilc.commons.gc.cuny.edu!

A daughter center of ILETC, originally active from 2014 to 2018, CILC first focused on language education in the Community College context, heritage learners, and the use of educational technology to foster intercultural connections. This section of the ILETC site preserves the teaching materials and research products produced by CILC during that first grant cycle.

The output of CILC’s 2014-2018 work can be viewed below:

  • Language at the Community College Nexus (LCCN)
    • This project provides the knowledge it generated about students and instructors of world languages at community colleges (CCs) across the U.S., including survey results, data sources, and references.
  • The Heritage Arabic e-Book (HAeB)
    • This free book includes assignments, tests, useful links for instructors, a glossary, heritage student profiles, and more.
  • Heritage Telecollaboration (HT)
    • These materials provide information about how to utilize digital communication platforms to enhance opportunities for long-distance interactions and intercultural experiences, specifically for foreign language instruction: materials, networks, a glossary, references, and more.
  • Writing Proficiency of Heritage Learners (WPHL)
    • This link provides a summary of important findings about heritage-learner writing proficiency, plus a downloadable assessment.

Additional information about CILC can be viewed below, and downloaded here (CILC Fast Facts) and here (CILC Fast Facts with Additional Details).

CILC Fast Facts_09-24-18 UPDATED 2022

CILC at ACTFL 2017

CILC was honored and excited to present several of our projects at the Annual Convention and World Languages Exposition of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) in Nashville, Tennessee.

For those of you who could not attend, we are sharing our presentations on this page. Please let us know if you have any comments or questions!

Presentations are organized by project.

Language at the Community College Nexus

ACTFL2017Slides_FINAL

Heritage Arabic eBook

ACTFL_PP_HAeB

Heritage Telecollaboration

ACTFL_2017_HT

Writing Proficiency of Heritage Learners

WPHL_Self-Rating_ACTFL Gatti_O'Neill_ACTFL2017_DevelSpanHeritageProficiency

Back from ACTFL 2016!

The weekend of November 18-20, CILC was honored and excited to present several of our projects at the Annual Convention and World Languages Exposition of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) in Boston, Massachusetts.

We received very warm responses to our presentations and made many exciting connections with language educators and administrators from around the country. We extend a special thank-you to the ACTFL attendees who came to our presentations or stopped by the CILC booth. It was a privilege to meet you, and we hope this leads to many fruitful collaborations in the future!

For those of you who could not attend, we are sharing the presentations at the end of this blog post. Please let us know if you have any comments or questions.

TelePlaza

We would especially like to highlightTelePlaza, the platform we are launching to connect educators in the heritage Spanish field who are interested in conducting telecollaborations with other instructors and classes in the United States. As has been the case at other conferences, we saw a great deal of interest in TelePlaza from ACTFL attendees, and we anticipate quick development of the project over the coming months.

We are developing the platform now, beginning with the creation of a network of instructors. Over the course of the Spring semester, we will be putting together technical resources and pedagogical materials that you can use to implement telecollaborations in your classes.

Visit the Teleplaza site. Stay tuned for more details as the project develops!

ACTFL Presentations and Handouts

Below you will find our five ACTFL presentations, organized by project, and the project handouts (links go to PDFs, where available).

Heritage Telecollaboration

HT: What, Why, How?
(Handout)

Suggestions for Telecollaborative Web Tools
(Handout)

Suggestions for Telecollaborative Mobile Tools
(Handout)

Heritage Telecollaboration and the Construction of Latinx identity
(Michael Rolland, Prof. Laura Villa, Prof. Arancha Borrachero)

Intercultural Discussions with Foreign Partners Using Smartphones
(Valeria Belmonti)

Language at the Community College Nexus

LCCN: What, Why, How?
(Handout)

CILC Survey of Students and Instructors of Language at Community College
(Dr. Alex Funk)

Writing Proficiency of Heritage Learners

WPHL: What, Why, How?
(Handout)

Writing Proficiency of Chinese, Korean and Spanish Heritage Learners
(Dr. Alberta Gatti, Dr. Cynthia Martin, Dr. Elvira Swender, Dr. Teresa O’Neill, Inés Vañó García)

Heritage Arabic eBook

HAeB: What, Why, How? (Handout)

HT News: Fall 2016

From the desk of Valeria Belmonti.

Greetings from the Heritage Telecollaboration team!

We hope that everyone had as enjoyable and productive a summer as we did. Below are some updates from our projects and activities.

Project Development

During the summer, we finalized the design of two telecollaborative modules which will be piloted this semester in Professor Cheng’s Heritage Chinese class at Hunter College, in partnership with Professor Guo’s English class at Inner Mongolia Normal University in Hohhot, China.

This semester we will also begin to analyze the data collected in the other pilots that were run by HT faculty last year. The findings of this research will eventually be disseminated through publications; we will release more information about our studies and publications towards the end of this semester.

Conferences

As communicated in June, our HT projects will be presented at the upcoming ACTFL Convention in Boston. Below you will find the details of our presentations. We hope to see you there!

Telecollaborative Mobile Apps

Presented During:  ACTFL Roundtable Presentations III
Friday, November 18, 2:30 p.m.–3:30 p.m.
Room: Exhibit Hall A & B1

Roundtable Presenter: Valeria Belmonti

Participants will be introduced to freely available mobile applications that can assist in connecting students to other speakers or learners of the target language and engaging them in telecollaborative projects. Programs’ interface and setup will be demonstrated, followed by a discussion on sample learning activities and teaching ideas.

Heritage Telecollaboration and the Construction of US Latin@ Identity

Saturday November 19, 8:00 a.m.–9:00 a.m.
Room: Room 261

Session Presenters: Laura Villa, Aránzazu Borrachero, Michael Rolland

How can heritage language educators use telecollaboration (TC) to tackle questions of language variation and identity? Presenters will offer insights from two pilot courses connecting US Latin@ students from diverse areas and backgrounds, encouraging students to rethink Latin@ identity while working to expand their linguistic repertoires.

Intercultural Discussions with Foreign Partners Using Smartphones

Saturday, November 19, 8:00 a.m.–9:00 a.m.
Room: Room 204B

Session Presenter: Valeria Belmonti

The presentation shares a task-based model of telecollaboration in which students complete intercultural activities with foreign partners using the free mobile application WeChat. Sample tasks, assessments, excerpts from student chats and presentations, and the feedback of from students and instructors will be discussed.

PLEASE NOTE: Even though two of our sessions will take place simultaneously, you can also obtain more information about our projects by stopping by our booth during the convention!

Our Chinese HT projects will also be presented at the NECTFL 2017 Conference, which will take place in New York City, February 9–11, 2017. For more information please visit:http://www.nectfl.org/.

Workshops

On October 1, we will conduct a professional development workshop for the language faculty at Bennington College, VT. The topic of the workshop will be Telecollaboration and Technology for Language Teaching and Learning. If you are an educator interested in organizing a technology professional development opportunity for your language teachers, please contact Valeria Belmonti at vbelmonti@gc.cuny.edu.

Networks

During the summer, we established a partnership with the UNI-Collaboration network, a European-based platform aimed at supporting the organization of online intercultural exchanges among universities. Our HT coordinator, Valeria Belmonti, has joined the Uni-Collaboration Liaisons Team and she will be, together with Sabine Levet at MIT, the US liaison to the UNI-Collaboration organization.

Inspired by the work of the Uni-Collaboration network and by the continuously growing interest for our Spanish HT projects, we are also in the process of creating a virtual network dedicated to US Spanish educators interested in designing domestic telecollaboration projects to explore topics and issues related to Latin@ Identity in the US. Stay tuned for more information.

Valeria Belmonti is the Associate Director of Technology at CILC and Coordinator of the Heritage Telecollaboration project.

HT Module – Family and Migration

Produced by
Aránzazu Borrachero, Valeria Belmonti, and Katherine Entigar

Download Module as PDF

Preparation and Resources

Objectives

Students will work independently and with their peers from both institutions (C1 and C2) to:

  1. investigate their family origins, including their migration histories and reasons for coming to the United States
  2. explore the relationship between their family’s country of origin – its history, politics and economic context – and their family’s migration experiences
  3. investigate how the history and politics of the United States are related to their family’s migration history

Materials

  1. Documentary: Harvest of Empire. Dirs. E. López and P. Getzels (2012)
  2. Information for creating in-text APA citations and APA-formatted References/Works Cited sections:
    1. In-text citations (APA style)
      1. http://guides.libraries.psu.edu/apaquickguide/intext
      2. https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/02/
    2. Creating a References/Works Cited Section:
      1. http://irsc.libguides.com/apa/formatreference
      2. https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/583/03/

Technology Resources/Requirements

  1. Class website
  2. Video conferencing platform such as Zoom, Skype or Facetime [to be used with Mac/Apple users]

Activity 1: Contextualizing Family Histories

The purpose of this activity is for students to learn about the broader economic, political, and social contexts surrounding the migration of their families to the United States through a documentary film and through individual research.​

Preparation for Videoconference

Harvest of Empire

Show the first 15–20 minutes of Harvest of Empire in class and discuss it with students. What are some initial impressions, reactions, and questions that emerge for them in watching this first block of the documentary? What are some ideas that surprise them? What did they already know? Assign the rest of the movie for students to watch on their own in preparation for next steps in this module.

In class, divide students into small groups to discuss Harvest of Empire. Have each group choose 1–2 countries they are interested in and assign 1–3 additional countries to each group for discussion. (The goal is for all eight countries to be covered by the different student groups in the class.) See below a list of suggested questions for discussion of the countries included in the film. In addition to focusing on individual country histories, have students discuss the questions included in the Conclusions block below. When students have finished their small group discussions, debrief as a class, building upon student ideas and offering additional insights as needed.

  1.  Questions (adapted from original online resource [no longer available]):
  2.  Puerto Rico
  3.  Why was the United States interested in Puerto Rico? Cite historical facts and economic factors.
    ii.    How has the United States benefited from Puerto Rican migration? How have Puerto Ricans benefited?
    iii.    What type of discrimination have Puerto Ricans faced in the United States?
  4.  Guatemala
  5.  What did Arbenz try to do in Guatemala?
    ii.    Is the United States responsible for the killings of Guatemalan soldiers? Why or why not?
  6.  Mexico
  7.  What is the meaning of the statement “We did not cross the border, the border crossed us”?
    ii.    Describe the relationship of Mexicans in the southwestern United States during the last 150 years to U.S. society, culture, and economy. What role(s) have Mexicans played? Do you think this is fair? Why or why not?
    iii.    What does the story of the Mexican doctor tell us about immigrants from Mexico and why they come to the United States?
    iv.    What have been the effects of NAFTA in Mexico? What about in the United States?
  8.  Cuba
  9.  How do you explain the fact that, during the first half of the 20th century, Cuba was both independent from and dependent upon the United States?
    ii.    Why did the Cuban refugees come to the United States after the Cuban revolution? What were they hoping to find, create, and/or change about their lives and those of their families?
  10.  The Dominican Republic
  11.  Why did the United States initially support Trujillo? Why did it stop supporting him?
    ii.    What have the experiences of immigrants from the Dominican Republic been in the United States?
  12.  Nicaragua
  13.  How would you describe the Somozas?
    ii.    Who helped put an end to Somoza’s domination?
    iii.    What did the Sandinistas do in Nicaragua?
    iv.    Explain the “Iran-Contra” scandal. Why was it a scandal?
  14.  El Salvador
  15.  The United States has historically been supportive of, or at least permissive to, political regimes which advocate and employ torture as a means of suppressing the general population in El Salvador. Why?
    ii.    The United States has historically admitted Latin American military leaders into the School of the Americas who later return to their countries and enact policies and actions that violate human rights. Why do you think this continues into the present day? Would you have supported Bishop Romero? Why or why not?
    iii.    What does the following quote from the documentary mean?: “When you finance and train a group of uniformed butchers who perpetrate massacres and destroy entire towns, you cannot say that people are emigrating, but rather that they are fleeing.”
  16.  Conclusions
  17.  Explain the title of the documentary.
    b.    What is its thesis (main idea and goal)?
    c.    What advantages and challenges do many Latin American immigrants experience when they arrive in this country?
    d.    Does the United States have a moral obligation to help people in the countries in which it has created instability? Why or why not?
    e.    At the end of the documentary, Juan González says: “We are all Americans of the New World and our most dangerous enemies are neither one nor the other, but the great wall of ignorance that exists between us.” What does he mean by this?
    f.    What most surprised you in the documentary? What did you find revealing? What did you find painful? What was inspiring to you?
    g.    After watching the documentary, have your perceptions of immigration, and the political, social, and economic contexts in which it takes place, changed?
    h.    What is the “spirit of America” that is mentioned at the end of the documentary?

(See additional teaching resources here.)

Background Research

Depending on the students’ research skills and experience, instructors may have to review and practice how to search for appropriate sources both online and offline, how to cite sources within a text and in the References/Works Cited section, how to avoid plagiarism in its different forms, how to summarize information in support of an argument, and other relevant topics.

​Inform students that they will conduct independent research about the political, social, and economic circumstances that existed in their families’ countries of origin leading up to and during the years in which their families migrated to the United States. Remind students to look for explanations, not simply descriptions or data. Suggested questions to guide students’ investigations include the following:

Set the political stage for your family’s country of origin at the time of their migration. Who were the country’s leaders? What political groups were in power? Were there other political actors, either inside or outside of the country, at the time?

  1. What was happening in the world at this time? What was the country’s relationship to the rest of the world politically and economically?
  2. What was the political, economic, and social state of affairs in your family’s country of origin at the time of their migration? What effect did such a context have on the population? How did this influence some people’s choice to immigrate to the United States?
  3. Are the immigration stories of other individuals and families in your country similar to your family’s story? In what ways? What, if anything, is unique about your family’s story?
  4. Were there any actions taken by the United States in your family’s country of origin which influenced its stability, safety, and/or ability to provide opportunities for its people? Consider economic, political, and/or social forces, pressures, and tensions across borders and between leaders and political groups.
  5. How was immigration from your family’s country of origin depicted by the U.S. media, politicians, and other public entities at the time? Find a news story or report that provides an example of this public discourse. How are immigrants from your family’s country of origin described and how is immigration described in broader terms? What stands out to you about this, if anything?

​Important: Remind students to take notes while they do their research, which they will then share with the rest of the class and with their peers at C2 by uploading them to the class website as a blog. In addition, have students create a Reference list for the sources they have consulted, which they will also include in their uploaded notes.

Task: Videoconference

Inform students that they will be meeting with the students at C2 to discuss their research and collaborate on new understandings about family migration and the historical, economic, and political contexts in which it takes place. In preparation for the videoconference, ask students to read their C2 peers’ research notes (see “Pre-Videoconference Activities: background research”), write three questions they want to ask them, and publish them as a question bank in the project home site. Sample questions include the following:

  1. What have you discovered in your research that you didn’t know about your family’s country of origin? Is there anything that you still want to find out?
  2. Have you had a chance to discuss your findings with any other member(s) of your family?
  3. If so, what was their response to your sharing the research you completed?

Have students discuss the questions they have generated in small groups with the students at C2 via videochat. When students have completed their chat with their peers at C2, have them upload their notes on the conversation to the class website in blog format.

Post-Videoconference Step

In-Class Discussion

  1. Ask students to read at home the notes uploaded by their C2 peers.
  2. Meet as a class to debrief about the videoconference experience. Ask students to reflect on what they found interesting, surprising, troubling, inspiring, etc. about their conversations with the students at C2.
    1. What new insights do they have about their own family backgrounds and histories, as well as the broader community histories this may reflect?
    2. Ask students to identify any patterns, similarities, differences, and/or unanswered questions that emerged in their discussions with the students at C2.

​How might this new knowledge contribute to knowledge sharing and solidarity building?

Activity 2: Exploring Family History through Interviews

The purpose of this activity is for students to learn about their families’ migration stories through interview-based research, and to compare these histories with those uncovered by their peers at C2.

Preparation for Videoconference

Blog

Have students write short blog comments on the class website in which they discuss what they know about their families’ personal migration histories[1]. Ask them to reflect on the following. How did your family get here, when, and why? Invite them to include anecdotes that they are comfortable with sharing. When students are finished, have them each comment substantively on another student’s blog, asking clarifying questions or drawing comparisons and contrasts with their own posts.

Family Interview

Prepare students to conduct research about family migration histories and experiences. They will accomplish this in the form of interviews conducted with a relative from their parents’ generation or from the previous one. In addition to the interview, students may include pictures of photographs, artifacts or other realia shared by their relatives, or create drawings of their own. It is important to inform students that interviews can bring up sensitive topics, memories and emotions, and that they must get permission from their interviewees to include any of the information collected, while also agreeing to omit anything that interviewees prefer to keep private. Interview questions can include some of the following:

  1. Tell me about how you came to the United States. Why did you emigrate from your country?
  2. Why did you choose the United States?
  3. What and who did you leave behind in your country of origin?
  4. Do you have any contact today with the country where you come from?
  5. Have you visited your country of origin since you have been in the United States?
  6. What language or languages are spoken in your country of origin and in your region of the country? Do you speak it/them with your family here or back home?
  7. Do you think it is important for your children to speak the language(s) of your country of origin and/or your region of the country? Why or why not?
  8. Did you study English before coming to the United States? Have you studied English since you’ve been here? Explain.
  9. In what language do you dream? In what language do you think?
  10. What is it like to live between two countries, two cultures, and two languages?
  11. Did you bring an important personal object with you when you emigrated? Why did you bring this with you? Do you still have it? If so, would you mind if I took a picture of it?
  12. Do you have a photograph of yourself or another artifact from the time before you migrated? If so, would you mind if I took a picture of it?

Have students post to the project home site their completed interviews along with an image; for example, a photograph they took of a family artifact, an image they drew to document the experience, or something else. Ask them to include a short (3–5 sentence) description of this image, including an account of why they chose it to represent their family’s immigration story.

Ask students to read at least two interviews (one from a C1 peer and one from a C2 peer) and comment on them on the home site.

 Task: Videoconference

Ask students to form small groups (3–4 students). Inform them that they will work together to discuss with their C2 peers the artifacts they posted to the project home site and their interviews with their relatives. Instruct students to take notes on the ideas and themes that emerge during the telecollaboration, paying attention to similarities and differences between stories, perspectives, and experiences. Some ideas and questions to discuss with their C2 partners may include:

  1. What was it like to research your family’s migration history?
  2. What new facts and stories did you learn?
  3. What feelings and reactions did this bring up?
  4. What commonalities and/or differences have you detected between your family’s migration history and that of other students in C1 and C2?

Post-Videoconference Step

In-Class Discussion

Have a class conversation addressing students’ observations about the experience of exchanging images and family migration histories with the students at C2. Some guiding questions may include:

  1. What was it like to share your family’s migration history with the students at C2, and to learn about their families’ stories? What feelings and reactions did this bring up?
  2. What commonalities and/or differences emerged in your family’s migration history compared to that of other students in your class? What about the students at C2?
  3. What role did/does language play in the telling, recording, and reporting of your family’s migration history? Are there some experiences, details, etc. that need to be expressed in one language rather than the other? Explain.
  4. Are there any general themes/ideas that have emerged in our shared immigration backgrounds? How might these ideas be a basis for building shared understandings and solidarity among immigrant groups?
 At Home: Written Reflection

Prepare your students to reflect on this experience in a written response. Invite them to draw upon their research and the activities they have completed in this module to write a 2–3 page essay summarizing what they have learned. They should write in narrative form, rather than responding to questions point by point, about the topics listed below. Prior to assigning the written reflection, discuss the rubric with the class. See a sample reflection at the end of the document. Remind them also to include the bibliography that they have used. These reflections will be posted on the project home site and shared with their peers at C2 for comments/feedback.

  1. What is your family’s country of origin? Describe its historical, political and economic context before and around the time your family migrated to the United States.
  2. What do you know about the history and politics of the United States in relation to your family’s country of origin and to Latin America in general?
  3. What are the connections between the contexts described above and your family’s decision to migrate?
  4. What have you learned from working with your C2 peers? Analyze and explain similarities and differences between families’ experiences and stories.

Have students post the reflection on the class website. Ask them to comment substantively on and/or ask questions about two other reflections either by their classmates at C1 and/or the students at C2. For example, they can state that they like/identify with the reflection, but they should also think critically about what was said, why the creator did what s/he did, etc., and comment on this. Have students respond to one comment that they received about their own reflection.

[1]Please note: As an individual’s or family’s immigration story is both personal and powerful, instructors should be sensitive to issues of safety and privacy. Students’ decision to share – or decision not to – should be paramount and thus be respected without question. A related issue to be considered is the sharing of personal/family information on the project home site; given the current political environment, students may justifiably feel anxiety about issues of exposure related to their or their family members’ status. In such instances, we suggest that instructors consider employing alternative ways for students to share family stories that do not reveal any identifying information, e.g., writing a collective post for the class, anonymizing posting, etc.

Rubric: Reflection

Sample Reflection

Familia y emigración

Todos los estudiantes de C1 y C2 vienen de familias de inmigrantes, pero hasta ahora no nos habíamos interesado por saber un poco más de estas historias de inmigración: cómo es que estamos aquí o por qué nuestras familias- papás, abuelos o bisabuelos- emigraron. En este módulo de Familia y Emigración todos hemos tomado conciencia de dónde provenimos y de que, gracias a nuestra familia de inmigrantes, estamos donde estamos, con una mejor vida y con un buen porvenir, sin necesidad de pasar sufrimiento, de aguantar hambre por la pobreza o sin tener dónde vivir por culpa de decisiones políticas y económicas de los poderes que nos gobiernan.

​Mi familia viene de Guatemala. Al investigar sobre Guatemala he sentido que descubría un nuevo país. Hay tantas cosas que desconocía. He sabido que, antes de que los españoles llegaran, Guatemala fue la cuna de una civilización muy desarrollada, con 2,000 años de antigüedad: los mayas. No me voy a extender sobre la historia maya porque quiero hablar sobre las razones que llevaron a mi familia a emigrar, pero me ha gustado mucho saber que en mis orígenes hay una cultura indígena muy avanzada que se mezcló con la cultura española durante la colonización.

Voy a saltar hasta los siglos XIX y XX para hablar de la presencia de los intereses comerciales de los Estados Unidos en Guatemala, que se reflejan muy bien en la historia de la United Fruit Company en mi país. La United no estuvo presente solo en Guatemala, sino que se enriqueció con los productos de la tierra de varios países de Centroamérica y Sudamérica. He encontrado un poema de Pablo Neruda titulado “La United Fruit Co.” que dice:

la Compañía Frutera Inc.
se reservó lo más jugoso,
la costa central de mi tierra,
la dulce cintura de América. (Canto general, 1950)

Y así fue. Con la complicidad de las oligarquías guatemaltecas y gobiernos como el de Justo Rufino Barrios (1873–1885), Manuel Estrada Cabrera (1898–1920) y Jorge Ubico (1931–1944) la United se convirtió en la fuerza económica más importante del país. Esta situación cambió con la llegada de Juan José Arévalo (1945–1951) y, sobre todo, Jacobo Arbenz (1951–1954). Arbenz intentó llevar a cabo una reforma agraria que iba en contra de los intereses norteamericanos. Por ejemplo, la United Fruit tendría que devolver tierras al Estado. Esto hizo que los Estados Unidos, a través de la CIA, apoyara un levantamiento militar contra Arbenz, a quien acusaron de comunista y loco.

A partir de entonces se desató una guerra civil en Guatemala que duró más de treinta años. La guerrilla campesina, el ejército y los grupos paramilitares de ultraderecha se enfrentaron y dejaron decenas de miles de víctimas. En 1982, otro golpe de estado militar puso en el poder al general Efraín Ríos Montt, responsable de un genocidio contra los indígenas. La violencia extrema continuó con otros presidentes hasta que se firmaron los acuerdos de paz en 1996.

En total, la guerra civil dejó más de cien mil muertos y cuarenta mil desaparecidos y obligó a más de cien mil personas a dejar el país. Mi familia sufrió en carne y hueso la violencia política de Ríos Montt. A mi papá lo obligaron a pelear con el ejército y después lo dejaron libre, pero un tío de mi papá, que se opuso a colaborar con el ejército, fue asesinado. Lo dejaron tirado en el monte, muerto. Enterarme de lo que mi familia pasó antes de llegar a Estados Unidos fue sorprendente.

Al leer las investigaciones e historias personales de los estudiantes de C1 y C2, he averiguado que muchos venimos de familias que buscaban un refugio para poder seguir viviendo, para salir adelante; que la mayoría de nuestros padres han venido a los Estados Unidos sin saber inglés y sin papeles, y superando grandes obstáculos; que nuestros países tienen problemas en común, como la desigualdad y la pobreza, que obligan a que las personas emigren. Aprendí que las políticas de Estados Unidos también son responsables de estos movimientos de migración. Estados Unidos es un país que, así como da, también quita y comete injusticias.

Bibliography Consulted

Aguilera, Gabriel. Realizar un imaginario: la paz en Guatemala, Guatemala, UNESCO/FLACSO, 2003.

Higonnet, Etelle (ed.). Quiet Genocide: Guatemala 1981–1983. Routledge, 2017.

Neruda, Pablo. “La United Fruit Co.”. Canto General. Spanish Poems. 2 mayo 2016 spanishpoems.blogspot.com/2005/04/pablo-neruda-la-united-fruit-co.html.

Sabino, Carlos. Guatemala, La Historia Silenciada: (1944–1989). Fondo de Cultura Económica de Guatemala, 2008.

Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America. Dir. Eduardo Lopez y Peter Getzels. Independent Pictures, 2012.

HT Modules

Spanish Modules Chinese Module

How to use our models

Every module presents a series of learning activities that were piloted in heritage and mixed heritage/L2 classes at CUNY colleges and partner institutions. The CUNY pilot classes were four hour–four credit courses that met twice a week, and they generally included approximately 30 students.

  • The modules can be used as they are or can be adapted according to the needs of your classroom in terms of level of proficiency, target content areas, unit duration, timeline of the activities, and geographical location of the classes involved in the project.
  • Considering the timelines of our pilot courses, each module was designed to be completed in a month. However, the sequence of activities can be adapted to fit shorter or longer timelines.
  • Every module was designed and implemented as a sequence of tasks, with each task composed of a sequence of activities; however, single tasks and activities can also be modified to be used as stand-alone telecollaborative projects.
  • The activities were designed to be used within a telecollaboration project run with a partner class. Activities, materials, and resources were aligned and used in parallel by the two courses. However, the sequence of activities, as well as individual activities, can be adapted to enhance collaboration among students within a single course that does not run a telecollaboration project with a partner course.
  • Prior to implementing the activities, it is important to allocate adequate time to prepare for the telecollaboration with your partner instructor, as well as set up the learning environment and prepare the students.
  • If you would like to use our materials but need assistance in creating variations/adaptations for your own classes, we would be happy to assist you. Please do not hesitate to contact us.

MadMagz

MadMagz is a web application that allows students to collaboratively create a digital magazine.

Images can be uploaded or inserted by URL. Text can be arranged according to different templates. Collaborators work on pages from a template and send them to the student designated as “editor”, for final editing and creation of the issue.

The free template and web magazine enable students to create and collaborate on multiple magazines and issues.