Learning from Community and Service
Learning from the Latinx Community (SPN 295) engages with people and organizations outside academia to promote social change through critical learning and reflection, respectful understanding of others, civic dialogue, and informed action. As a student in this course, you’ll participate in a year-long practicum at a community organization serving Latinxs. You’ll also continue to hone your Spanish language skills while learning from local experts about topics that affect Latinx people at the local, state, and national levels.
“This course is innovative because it offers a creative way to bring service-learning opportunities to the foreign languages — a challenge in Grinnell and a need in our general curriculum,” says Associate Professor Maria Carmen Valentin. “It creates more meaningful and beneficial experiences for both students and community partners.”
As the only service-learning course offered in the Spanish department, SPN 295 will give you the opportunity to pursue a kind of learning that would typically only be possible while studying off-campus.
“There are many things to consider when constructing a course like this,” says Susan Sanning, associate dean and director of service and social innovation. “How do we do this work well and ensure we are not using the community as our laboratory, or collaborate to ensure we are not a gentrifying force in our neighborhoods? How do we center community agency and serve with them?”
The course incorporates the expertise of community members and their lived experiences by connecting the community engagement element with academic coursework. It brings in local experts as speakers; students volunteer with partner organizations that work directly with Spanish-speaking people.
“Students will learn that studying Spanish is not only studying a set of grammar rules and vocabulary; they will also be able to experience how the humanistic knowledge and soft skills taught in Spanish courses have a practical dimension that can be applied to real life in any field and context,” Valentin says.
At the heart of this course is the teaching of positionality — how the way we perceive and understand the world affects how we interact with others. How does our perceived identity bias our perceptions? In this course, you’ll learn about your position and relationship with the spaces you occupy; you’ll develop an understanding of when to step up or hold back. Fostering this kind of self-reflection and self-critique within a culture is another class objective, allowing you to gain awareness of how your beliefs and practices can be understood in the context of your culture, and promoting respect, dialogue, and collaboration in intercultural interactions.
“Stimulating humility and openness to listen to and learn from people traditionally marginalized or with lower educational and socioeconomic backgrounds is vital,” Valentin says. “That’s how you understand their struggles, value their opinions, and consider them equal contributors in decision-making interactions.”