Long Distance Interaction for Huntington AP Spanish Classes
They won’t let any distance hold them back. Huntington High School Advanced Placement Spanish students have been communicating via e-mail with fellow teenagers in Monterrey, Mexico for past few months. They recently took the initiative to another level by participating in a Skype video conference with the group.
One of the seven sections on the AP Spanish Language and Culture exam is to respond to an e-mail while another section involves oral cultural comparisons. “So these activities were great ways to practice the target language and culture,” AP Spanish teacher Mercy Pena said. “It was a different and exciting way of practicing language and culture. Our goal with the e-mails was for students to practice the written language and at the same time learn about the Mexican culture.”
Earlier this fall, the Huntington AP Spanish students wrote about the history and tradition of Halloween to their Mexican counterparts, who wrote back about the history and tradition of The Day of the Dead.
“During Thanksgiving week, our students wrote about the first Thanksgiving and how it’s celebrated today,” said Mrs. Pena, who has been teaching in Huntington since 2001. “The Mexican class was celebrating the Revolution of 1910 during this time, so we also asked them about this holiday in their country.”
During the recent Skype conference, one of the Huntington students asked what the Mexican teenagers’ opinion is about Pancho Villa, who fought in the Mexican Revolution. “They responded that he was a hero to them because he fought to help the poor in Mexico,” said Mrs. Pena, who earned an undergraduate degree at Universidad Estatal de Cuenca (State University of Cuenca) in Ecuador and a master’s degree at New York University. “We also spoke about the Mexican Posadas and Christmas. The Mexican students answered questions concerning their views of their president, their first lady and the scandal involving the missing college students in Mexico.”
The two sets of students queried each other about their respective school and culture. The teenagers learned that they have more similarities than differences.
“Miriam Ayala is the Spanish language arts teacher at Tecnológico de Monterrey, so my students were lucky that all of the correspondence was in Spanish,” Mrs. Pena said. “In previous years my students corresponded with students from Ecuador and Spain, who were learning English as a foreign language. They practiced their English while my students practiced their Spanish.”
Mr. Pena’s classes have been using e-mail and Skype for educational purposes for many years. “When we first started this we corresponded with an AP Spanish class in New Jersey,” the veteran faculty member said. “This year we got connected with the Mexican school through Alicia Rescigno, educational coordination manager of Know My World.”
“Know My World is a global education resource that connects participants digitally in shared learning experiences,” according to the organization’s website. “Interested participants contact Know My World via an e-mail request form on our website and are matched from our global database with a partner school in another country. These exchanges are facilitated and managed by a KMW staff member. Participants work with the KMW facilitator and each other to collaborate and plan projects for their students.” Visit http://knowmyworld.org/ for more information about the organization.
The Huntington students used the high school computer lab to conduct research into the history of Halloween so they could accurately explain its origins to their Mexican peers. The teenagers also investigated the background of The Day of the Dead so they could understand this Mexican holiday better.
Mrs. Pena hopes to continue the initiative, which has captured of the imagination of her classes through the years.