Artifact for Standard Nine: Reflective Practice and Professional
Development
Name of Artifact: Super Teacher Institute
Date: December 1, 2011
Rationale:
This artifact is about a teacher’s institute that I attended one summer for a week geared to Alabama Spanish teachers. Throughout this conference we studied the novel Las Películas de mi Vida, which is a book written in Spanglish. One of the themes behind the conference was the movement of Spanglish in today’s society. We discussed the identity that is behind the 2nd and 3rd generational Hispanics that identify with this movement. We also read through some short stories and poetry written in Spanglish. The goal was to not only become more informed about this movement, but also to explore ways that we as teachers could then incorporate this material into our classrooms. We also watched the movie, “A Day without a Mexican” and looked at the issue of illegal immigration. A lawyer came in and presented to us factual knowledge related to immigration, what the immigration law actually says, as well as the rights that illegal immigrants have in this country. Another aspect of this institute was a healthcare side where both a university professor for nursing and an interpreter at the hospitals came in to talk to us. They shared the need for having bilingual people work and be present at the hospitals. The artifact shown here is my certificate of attendance for going to this institute.
This institute was extremely informative about what is going on in the Hispanic world today. It was my first introduction to literature written in Spanglish, which I was later able to study more in-depth in a course I took in the MATL program. It gave me an idea of ways to differentiate the curriculum for classes that I have with native speakers mixed in with other non-Spanish-speaking students. Finally, it inspired the idea of partnering with the local hospitals to create stuffed animal bears for all of the Hispanic patients. This institute helped me grow professionally in my knowledge of the Spanish language, Hispanic culture, and as a teacher.
This artifact is filed under standard nine, which is reflective practices and professional development. I thought that this was a great example of how I was able to grow professionally through attending a summer institute. It allowed me to reflect upon my practices as a teacher and develop ways to improve activities as well as create projects that would benefit the Hispanic community where I lived. In the future, I would love to attend another one of these institutes as they are specifically geared towards Spanish teachers. The benefit of this, is that is helps one grow in the language since it is conducted completely in Spanish as well as gives opportunities to create and develop teaching activities for the Spanish classroom.