"We Are the Change" — Experiences from the Project Transnational Spaces for Intercultural Encounters in Spanish Teacher Education

31 May 2022

Photo: Privat

As part of the project Transnational Spaces for Intercultural Encounters in Spanish Teacher Education: Raising Critical Cultural Awareness, a group of prospective Spanish teachers traveled to the United States.

Universität Hamburg and its strategic partner Indiana University (United States) carried out an in-person study abroad program in Indianapolis from 26 April to 3 May 2022 as part of the project Transnational Spaces for Intercultural Encounters in Spanish Teacher Education: Raising Critical Cultural Awareness.

After flying out with Lisa Marie Brinkmann, our lecturer for the complementary-seminar of the advanced internship, we were warmly welcomed on the first day by Dr. Josh Prada, the program’s codirector. A varied and eventful program awaited us and offered more than we had expected. To process our impressions, we were helped by a reflection portfolio that we used over the course of the week to write down our findings and organize our thoughts.

The goal of the program was to professionalize as well as to collect and reflect on intercultural experiences. Instead of intercultural experiences, we were able to gain transcultural experiences as prospective Spanish teachers from a German university traveling to the United States to learn about translanguaging in the classroom and to come into contact with students from Indianapolis. The students are part of a Latinxs seminar led by Dr. Josh Prada in which they reflect on their language of origin, Spanish, as part of their identity and share their experiences as a multilingual person in the United States. The openness with which the students shared their experiences of discrimination was touching and powerful. This made it clear to us how important it is to recognize and appreciate languages as part of our identity, also in the classroom. As prospective language teachers, it became increasingly clear to us how little the school system accommodates people who do not conform to societal norms. This realization was hard for us and often made us sad. However, the lectures and discussions during our study abroad also gave us a lot of courage to initiate a change in the schools. And not only one of us realized that we have a special chance to become teachers, because we are the change.

Some program highlights:

– the lecture by Dr. Tiffany Kayser and Ryan Sundeen from the Great Lakes Equity Center, which provides a point of contact for schools that focus on minoritized groups in day-to-day school life

– the introduction to estudios latinos by Dr. Michael Snodgrass, who gave us an interesting policy background on Latinxs in the United States

– the lecture by Dr. Annela Teemant, who gave us practical tips on incorporating diversity and learner-centered instruction, along with other concepts of successful teaching, into our school teaching

– the impressive visit to a renowned primary school that has already put into practice what we learned over the previous days and places each individual student at the center of the lesson in order to view them as problem solvers.

– the art therapy session, in which we could artistically express our despertar crítico (critical awakening) during the week—for example, our role as teachers or our understanding of the relevance of critical pedagogies—in the form of a final project

For this, we are very thankful to Josh Prada as well as our lecturer Lisa Marie Brinkmann of Universität Hamburg, who not only set up the program but, through her questions, always introduced in new ideas that drove our learning process forward.

The project is being funded within the scope of the funding line for innovative teaching and learning formats.

Authors: Lea Wistuba and Brendan Bröer