by Owen Schacht
Throughout the past year, educators have been working tirelessly to find innovative ways to teach students and keep them captivated. Ms. Alba Santana, Fieldston High School Spanish teacher, has done just that by implementing a language exchange program with two of her senior intensive Spanish classes. Since the beginning of this school year we have been learning either entirely remotely or in a hybrid classroom setting, this challenge became a vehicle for students from Venezuela to interact with our classes.
During this past summer, riddled with Covid-19, Ms. Santana pondered “how to make this year a year for my senior students to remember.” She wanted students to have an opportunity to interact with native speakers, and a Google Meet format provided a perfect setting to realize her goal. Despite any hardships with the process, Ms. Santana said, “I just embraced this idea and went with it.” She reached out to friends across the globe, not only Venezuela but México and Spain as well, to eventually find someone she knew who works at El Instituto Escuela in Caracas, Venezuela. Her friend connected her with an English teacher at the school who was excited about a possibility for a language exchange.
The English class at El Instituto Escuela is an extracurricular class (similar to an elective) which has students who have been taking this course for many years, by choice. These students possess a genuine desire to become fluent in English. This experience is immensely valuable to both the Venezuelan students as well as the ECFS students. It allows for students to speak to native speakers, which is perfect for practicing communication skills. Ms. Santana said that “in general, [students] tend to put more effort into the communication piece in this kind of setting.” An additional component of this program that provides worldly knowledge to both groups of students is the exposure to the native speaker’s culture, which is not comparable in textbooks. “I particularly value the fact that my students, and the students in Venezuela, have to interact with people in another part of the world, only because the language they have chosen to study allows it. In a way, it is rewarding to see them all ‘using’ what they have learned.”
Ms. Santana and the teacher from Venezuela meet weekly to plan the curriculum for the joint classes. Initially, the objective was for the students in each class to get to know one another as well as exploring the similarities and cultural differences. Later, the goal shifted towards completing activities in small groups to allow for students to have even more opportunities to interact. She said, “At that point, we decided that the activities were going to focus on assignments where students had to complete a task. How each group interacts, organizes and completes the task is part of the cultural/language exchange.” I can say, from personal experience in this class, that we are very similar at the end of the day and it is quite refreshing to interact with new people from a new place who enjoy watching the same TV shows on Netflix and gossiping about the same drama.
Ultimately, Ms. Santana is considering continuing this program in future years. Especially throughout a pandemic, this experience allowed for our class to become more engaged and close as a community and will certainly be something I always remember and cherish.
