Syllabus-SPANM200-Intermediate Spanish I
Spanish M200-Intermediate Spanish I: Open For Antiracism (OFAR)
Overview
The Open for Antiracism (OFAR) Program – co-led by CCCOER and College of the Canyons – emerged as a response to the growing awareness of structural racism in our educational systems and the realization that adoption of open educational resources (OER) and open pedagogy could be transformative at institutions seeking to improve. The program is designed to give participants a workshop experience where they can better understand anti-racist teaching and how the use of OER and open pedagogy can empower them to involve students in the co-creation of an anti-racist classroom. The capstone project involves developing an action plan for incorporating OER and open pedagogy into a course being taught in the spring semester. OFAR participants are invited to remix this template to design and share their projects and plans for moving this work forward.
Course Description
Intermediate Spanish I online, SPAN M200
Course Description:
Prerequisite: SPAN M110, three years of high school Spanish, or equivalent.
Intermediate SPAN M200 is the first section of a sequence of two courses (SPAN M200 and SPAN M210) covering the second year of college-level Spanish (transferable to CSU and UC systems). In the course of the semester lecciones 11- 15 in the textbook Portales and selected additional readings will be studied. SPAN M200 is an intermediate course that aims at improving Spanish proficiency and deepening students' knowledge of the Spanish language and of Spanish- speaking cultures and civilizations. The emphasis of the class will be on enriching the understanding of Spanish-speaking cultures through reading and writing, while at the same time learning and reviewing grammar concepts. The grammatical emphases of this class are the past, future, subjunctive, conditional, and perfect tenses.
Studying selected aspects of Spanish-speaking cultures and civilizations are an important and integral part of the class. The goal of this class is to become proficient in oral and written Spanish and acquire a critical understanding of Spanish- speaking cultures. Since communication is the pivotal aspect of language learning, students will engage in live online chats to practice the target language.
Course Learning Outcomes for Intermediate Spanish I:
- demonstrate some knowledge and understanding of the cultures of the Spanish-speaking regions studied.
- conduct interpersonal communications in the language, such as practical dialogues, in both oral and written form in all major time frames.
- demonstrates comprehension of advanced-level authentic texts [reading, listening, and viewing] on day to day activities, such as advertisements,
applications, instructions, articles, and schedules.
- describe events and present information about some topics of general interest in both oral and written form in all major time frames.
- apply technology to the language-learning process and cultural research projects.
Action Plan
One of the main ways open pedagogy and OER help my class be antiracist is by redistributing the power dynamics in my course to give students more agency in their learning process.
The plan of action to redistribute the power dynamics in the class included the following:
-Engaging students in co-creating a community agreement at the beginning of the semester to get input form students regarding what they feel would benefit them most as a learning community and be informed about what they value and what would help them feel safe and welcomed into our community.
-Adapting OER discussion on identity and privilege wheel as an introductory discussion for students to get to know each other on deeper level while at the same time valuing the diversity in backgrounds and experiences they bring to the class.
-Becoming more flexible on critical thinking assignments to give students the freedom to express their truest selves. Allowing students to choose answering discussions in diverse formats such as: written form, video, audio, presentation, poems, etc. Instead of dictating in every assignment the format they should use. I became more intentional on allowing more agency whenever possible.
-Letting students decide what topics/authors/communities they want to study within a particular topic in the course instead of just following the traditional textbook materials. This allowed the content to be more current and relevant to the students. Ex: Students chose which poet to study and present.
-OER sources allowed me to use more images that represented diverse populations in the Hispanic/Latinx context. I utilized more images of historically underrepresented populations such as black, indigenous, people of color, etc.
-Include more critical topics to equity and anti-racist curriculum such as:
- Racist nature of the use of a colonized language (history about repressing indigenous languages to establish dominance)
- Diversity in language: value in diverse Spanish registers and the heritage speaker experience
- Underrepresented populations in technology in the Latinx/Hispanic context
- Disparate impact on environmental issues in indigenous populations in the Latinx/Hispanic context
- Racism and Afro-Latinx populations in the Latinx/Hispanic context
Antiracist Assignment / Module
I have included two assignments as an example of the use of antiracist and open pedagogy in this class.
In the first assignment students are asked to research about the Afro-Latina poet Mary Grueso. They are asked to research themselves to take agency in their learning process and form their own impressions before sharing with the class.
Then students are asked to read one of her most famous poems that deals explicitly with the topic of racism and colorism in Latin American and Hispanic countries. Students then have to answer a set of comprehension questions and are asked to comment on their classmates' responses.
Here is the link to the poem:Negra Soy
This is an intermediate language class, their language skills are still somewhat limited regarding extensive literary analysis, but they can express overall impressions and engage in some analysis with focused ideas and key words.
The second assignment is a follow-up to this one. After modeling an example of a relevant and diverse poet from a historically underrepresented poet, students are asked to research and select their own poet from one of the regions we studied before in the class, and they are asked to present it to the class in a discussion.
This assignment aims to build confidence and agency as scholars to research and share their own poets and share their unique perspectives on those poets and their poems.