{"id":40802251789,"date":"2020-12-16T17:11:15","date_gmt":"2020-12-16T22:11:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/?p=40802251789"},"modified":"2021-01-15T11:37:37","modified_gmt":"2021-01-15T16:37:37","slug":"service-learning-goes-virtual-with-spanish-language-library-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/service-learning-goes-virtual-with-spanish-language-library-program\/","title":{"rendered":"Service-learning goes Virtual with Spanish Language Library Program"},"content":{"rendered":"

According to Alison Maginn, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of World Languages and Cultures, service-learning and community engagement (SLCE) is a counter normative mode of teaching and learning that is \u201cmessy\u201d by nature. Even with her years of experience with SLCE developed through Monmouth\u2019s study abroad program at the University of C\u00e1diz-Andaluc\u00eda, in Cadiz, Spain, Maginn says \u201cengaging in service learning during a pandemic brought the complexities of this pedagogy and practice to a whole new level.\u201d Throughout the fall semester, Maginn integrated SLCE into her third-year course FS300A, Advanced Spanish Conversation and Oral Discourse, meeting in a hybrid format both face-to-face and online.<\/p>\n

Until this semester, Maginn and her students engaged with community organizations in Asbury Park and Long Branch through reciprocal and co-creative relationships with community members and partners, in a bilingual dynamic of English and Spanish. \u201cGiven the growing immigrant populations of both towns, potential allyship and co-constructed programming in Spanish have become increasingly significant and sought after,\u201d Maginn said. By the summer of 2020, however, Maginn said it became clear that a planned service project with Long Branch Free Public Library in bilingual storytelling and intercultural mentoring would not be able to proceed as usual.<\/p>\n

The Children\u2019s Librarian, Nekesha Marshall, with whom Maginn had developed a collaborative relationship, confirmed that the library would be closed to the public. At that point, Miss Nekesha, as she is known by her young patrons, suggested that Maginn\u2019s students could help create much-needed content in Spanish, since all programming was going to be online. With patronage that is 80 percent Spanish speaking and 10 percent Portuguese speaking, it was crucial for the Long Branch Free Public Library to provide materials and services in these languages, but with the pandemic forcing the library to close, services in Spanish became limited.<\/p>\n

Maginn saw an opportunity for collaboration and mutual enrichment: as part of their Spanish course on oral discourse, Monmouth students could choose a children\u2019s book in Spanish from the Long Branch Free Public Library\u2019s collection, practice reading and performing it in face-to-face and Zoom classes, and ideally improve their reading and oral presentation skills in Spanish while helping Miss Nekesha create online content for the parents and children who make good use of the library\u2019s programs. As is often the case with SLCE, there were intended and unintended outcomes. Monmouth students did indeed practice their reading skills, vocabulary building, and reading out loud in Spanish, itself a difficult skill to master, but, Maginn said, \u201cso much more learning also took place.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThrough oral and written critical reflection, students documented learning and growth across an array of areas,\u201d Maginn said, in part because the books themselves were rich in linguistic and cultural content. \u201cThink of how many animals and magical creatures appear in children\u2019s stories, not to mention the importance of word-play, rhyme, rhythm, and dramatic effect,\u201d Maginn said, citing examples like Siempre, siempre te querr\u00e9<\/em><\/a>, Insectos<\/a>, <\/i>the Llama Llama<\/em><\/a> books, and the No lleves tu drag\u00f3n<\/em><\/a> books.<\/p>\n

Maginn said that some of the stories selected for the program were translations of famous children\u2019s books in English from the likes of Dr. Seuss, where the rhyme, rhythm, and humor had to come across in Spanish just as in English (see Tengo un molillo en mi bolsillo<\/em><\/a>), while other selections were from Hispanic authors with Hispanic illustrators, so the content was not only linguistically rich but also culturally specific and sensitive (see Mi pap\u00e1 tiene una moto<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>Una bicicleta como la de Sergio<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>Valentina y la dragona<\/em><\/a> and Arroz con leche<\/em><\/a>).<\/p>\n

Maginn also cited the physical and technical issues that came into play for her students: how to film, how to light, and how to hold the book and read at the same time. \u201cStudents were using their phones to record themselves without the benefit of professional equipment,\u201d Maginn said. \u201cOne student, Gabriella Cleven, had a technique, which became known to the class as the \u2018Gabriella method:\u2019 filming the book from above, using a laptop stand she already had.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before the stories were ready to send to the library, students had to practice many times in class and alone, doing various linguistic exercises and vocal acrobatics, at times in front of a mirror so that they could get their tongues around some of the difficult words and breathe through the correct phrasing and sound sequences. Maginn credits Monmouth\u2019s online classes through Zoom with providing advantages that are not available in face-to-face class meetings where masking and distancing made it impossible for the professor and students to see one another\u2019s mouths.<\/p>\n

Using Zoom, Maginn could clearly model and check vocal exercises and pronunciation, and everyone could see, for example, how the intervocalic \u2018d\u2019 in Spanish has to be produced with the tongue between the teeth.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the most gratifying aspects of the project for me, our students, and the library is that the final product is culturally rich, civically engaged, and fun for the whole community,\u201d Maginn said. \u201cSome of these students are Spanish majors, but most are Spanish minors, majoring in a range of disciplines including business, biology, chemistry, education, English, health studies, nursing, social work, political science and psychology.\u201d<\/p>\n

Maginn also encourages members of the Monmouth community to avail themselves of the stories for their own enrichment and enjoyment and for the children in their lives. \u201cThe younger the child, the less they will question the language of the story,\u201d Maginn said. She also said that some of the stories, such as \u00bfD\u00f3nde est\u00e1 Oso?<\/em><\/a>, Manta de amor<\/em><\/a>, Siempre, siempre te querr\u00e9<\/em><\/a> and similarly titled Siempre te querr\u00e9<\/em><\/a>, are ideal for very young children, while others are suited to children above three years old, including Buenas noches construcci\u00f3n<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>Las dos Olivias<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>Las zanahorias mal\u00e9ficas<\/em><\/a> and Si yo dise\u00f1ara un auto<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

The stories are available via a link on the webpage of Long Branch Free Public Library <\/a>(\u201cListen to our storytimes in Spanish\u201d), or on the library\u2019s YouTube page<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Student<\/p>\n

\"Service<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to Alison Maginn, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of World Languages and Cultures, service-learning and community engagement (SLCE) is a counter normative mode of teaching and learning that is \u201cmessy\u201d by nature. Even with her years of experience with SLCE developed through Monmouth\u2019s study abroad program at the University of C\u00e1diz-Andaluc\u00eda, in Cadiz, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":282,"featured_media":40802251827,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[221,176,215,212,191,423],"tags":[],"person":[1299,1305,1302],"audience":[],"school":[26,239],"program":[],"class_list":["post-40802251789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community-service","category-diversity-and-inclusion","category-experiential-education","category-giving-back","category-personalized-education","category-faculty-perspectives","person-alison-maginn","person-gabriella-cleven","person-nekesha-marshall","school-school-of-humanities-and-social-sciences","school-foreign-language-studies"],"squareimage":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802251789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/282"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40802251789"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802251789\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40802252170,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802251789\/revisions\/40802252170"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40802251827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40802251789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40802251789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40802251789"},{"taxonomy":"person","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/person?post=40802251789"},{"taxonomy":"audience","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/audience?post=40802251789"},{"taxonomy":"school","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/school?post=40802251789"},{"taxonomy":"program","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/program?post=40802251789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}