If you are looking for books to help you to rethink the content in your curriculum, here are a few! Hard to choose one since all of them are filled with great content. I love that these books have been written by educators for educators. I’m currently working on updating/replacing and creating units, and these resources have been a great support.
? “Unpack Your Impact: How Two Primary Teachers Ditched Problematic Lessons and Built a Culture-Centered Curriculum”: This book has great examples of how to reconceptualize lessons to help students think critically and go deeper, and beyond “fun facts.” I actually learned historical facts from this book myself!
? “Being the Change – Lessons and Strategies to Teach Social Comprehension” is a book that I have used as a resource for the affinity group for students of color at my school. I have also been able to adapt some of the ideas presented in the book for my Spanish classes, e.g., Identity unit.
? I first came across the “Rethinking Schools” publications in a course I took for my master’s degree a little over ten years ago (time flies!). These books are filled with anecdotes and reflections from teachers and their classroom experiences. There is no need to read these books in a certain order. These are the two books in the video: 1. Rethinking Early Childhood Education 2. Rethinking Our Classrooms: Teaching for Equity and Justice – Vol 1
? Last, but not least “Words and Actions: Teaching Languages Through the Lens of Social Justice” is a book written for world language educators, but anyone can benefit from reading it. This book has great examples of language lessons for different levels. I’m still working on finishing this one!
Growing up in Colombia we didn’t have a “Columbus Day.” This “holiday” was called “El Día de la Raza” to celebrate the different races born after the mix of a not a very pleasant encounter. Even though it wasn’t known as Columbus Day, it was still meant to focus on the “great” things Columbus did for us (we celebrated Cristobal Colón, as he is known in Spanish). I have a vivid story of when I was in 3rd grade and Profe Raquel told us that if it weren’t for Cristopher Columbus we would not have been sitting in that classroom listening to the stories of how brave he was to travel across the Atlantic to new lands. Although teachers made an attempt to recognize the diversity in Colombia, it continued supporting the main narrative that Columbus was great and brave. I never remember hearing of all the bad he did to the people who were in the territories where he landed until later when I was in bachillerato (high school).
In the last decades, countries like Venezuela and Nicaragua have opted to change the name of this holiday to “El día de la Resistencia Indígena” to honor the struggles the Indigenous people went through during the colonization period and to acknowledge that these struggles are not over. Other countries have joined this movement too!
As language educators, we can’t continue supporting the sugar-coated stories about Cristobal Colón. This is an invitation to make space and time in our curriculums to have these conversations and show the true story. It doesn’t matter if it takes some class time to have these conversations in our students’ first language. Children might also be having these conversations within their homerooms, so this can be reinforced in Spanish class.
A teacher friend that I admire and has been working hard on bringing this work to the classroom is Fran, also know as The Woke Spanish Teacher. Her curriculum is deep in Anti-Bias and Anti-Racist (ABAR) education and she works on this all year round. When doing this type of work in the classroom, it is important to know your students and also their developmental stage so that the material can be tailored to their age group. This is something that I am currently working hard on and something Fran knows how to do really well.
Here is an example of what Fran does with her students:
But before bringing these topics to the classroom we have to do the work. We really need to educate ourselves. There are several trustworthy sources on the internet. Here are some that I recommend:
Just like this post on Instagram, as a language educator, I need to be intentional and not just acknowledge other cultures at designated times on the calendar.
