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. Credit to CSUMB Catalogue. COURSE NARRATIVE: This course was taken fall 2018. This course meets MLO 3: Secondary Cultural Knowledge The objective of this course is to learn about the Latino culture, beliefs, values and philosophies. They also teach of the social injustices and current events that deal with the Latino community and allows us to discuss these events as a group with a diverse set of backgrounds to delve deeper into the values of the Latino community. Some of these topics ranged from immigration to the subject of identity. My favorite class activities were the discussions we held as a whole class, with these various topics in mind, where we were able to share and listen to the different perspectives of classmates. This allowed us to be able to take in the various ways that experience has shaped us as individuals, many of who are part of the Latino community in this area and have had personal experiences in the many topics that were up for discussion. In this course I volunteered as a tutor at Cesar Chavez Library in the Spanish Citizenship Classes that are offered in Salinas. This was an enlightening experience as I was able to observe the determination Latino adults were able to demonstrate through their efforts to attend these biweekly meetings late in the day. Many of these individuals, as I learned through the mock-interviews, were either retired or still working full-time jobs. This really left an impression on me, as they toiled at work every day and then at home only to come to these classes tone taught through this exhausting test in order to become citizens of this country. One of the most lasting sentiments that will most likely never leave me, was through the welcoming manner they received me and other new students. They did not allow the struggles of life or age bar them from being kind to others also in the same situation as them. I am thankful for this opportunity as I was able to gain a greater knowledge of the past and present experiences of numerous figures in the Latino community in Salinas that impacted me and altered the image of Latinos. |
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