Central American Students Inspired to Share Family Stories

By Anna Lapera

Anna Lapera visits with DCAESJ coordinator Vanessa Williams at the Teaching for Change office with her book Mani Semilla Finds Her Quetzal Voice.

I have taught Central America: An Introductory Lesson in both my ESL level 1 + 2 class, as well as my Spanish as a Heritage Language class at Julius West MS (MCPS). In the ESL class, we spent several days on the activity.

First, I did a lesson on maps so that students could locate the countries that they would see mentioned in the profiles. The majority of my students moved to the United States from Central American countries, but they were not able to locate the countries they came from on a map. For some, they told me that this was their first time seeing Central America or their home country on a map. It was very exciting for them.

Next I used the profiles in the lesson as a reading comprehension activity. Using one color highlighter, students scanned the text for any words they knew. With another highlighter, they scanned sight words or words they recognized but were not 100% sure of. Then I had them answer basic questions about their bio, such as who, what, where, etc. This was so that when it came time to walking around and sharing, they could give some basic details with confidence. Using individual dry erase boards, I had students draw details from the profile. I asked them: if this text was a picture, what would be in it? Finally, students walked around and gave basic details about their profiles. They filled out worksheets with sentence starts, "My name is______", "I am from__________".

Students were extremely engaged in the activity, even though the text was challenging for levels 1 and 2. Some students kept going back to the map I had placed in the room so that they could keep pointing to their country of origin.

One student was in awe to be able to trace how her family had arrived in the United States, saying "we walked this whole way, and my baby brother was only one!". Another student was very excited to receive Berta Cáceres profile, because this student was also from Honduras. She said she was excited to go home and ask her mom if she knew of her.

Many students could not stop giggling because they could not believe that they were learning about their countries of origin in the United States.

For my Spanish heritage language class, I followed a similar lesson plan. However, I added an extension activity where students had to research an additional person that they would add to the lineup. The most memorable thing that happened in that class was that a student of Salvadoran heritage was so excited to read about people from El Salvador that when he came back to school the next week, he brought in a book that his grandfather had written about the civil war in El Salvador. The lesson had given him an opportunity to speak with his grandfather about his experiences.

Overall the activity was so engaging for all levels! The fact that every student gets a unique person is GOLD. It prevented students from copying each other, but encouraged collaboration. Some students chose to sit with other figures from the same country, or based on whether the figure was an artist, politician, activist, etc.

The most impactful thing about it was how many students either said "I heard about her!" or "I've never learned about someone from Honduras at school!" For some students in my heritage language class, it was the very first time they got to read about someone from their country of heritage in a school setting. And for my ESL students, it allowed me to set the tone that people from their countries of origin are worthy of study (which may not always be the message they get outside of their ESL classes).

Other beautiful moments were when students said they would ask their families about the people they read. When a student wants to go home and talk about the lesson, that is a win. I was so amazed and happy at how this lesson created moments of connection between students and their families.