Currently, I am teaching Spanish I, Spanish II, and Honors Spanish II. We use the Exprésate series. Based on Slattery's points regarding curriculum and more specifically using curriculum for hegemonic purposes, I am lead to further question not so much the content but the academic experiences of my students. Slattery says that curriculum in the postmodern era reflects eclectic interests and talents of the students and provides opportunity for contextual understanding of the material. Although I am not thrilled with some of the textbook and its organization at times, it certainly is a product of the postmodern era curriculum design. Unfortunately, however, the veteran teachers in my department are products of the "old school" method of foreign language instruction, which basically places emphasis on being as productive as possible with special emphasis on memorization and drilling. Despite my constant attempts to move away from the way in which the book and its curriculum are used, I fear for my students that as a result of this implementation they are missing out on critical thinking, authentic tasks, and cultural education. The speed in which my colleagues moves does not allow me to cover the culture sections of the text because we are too pressed for time, which is a disservice to my students because an extremely important component of language instruction is learning about the culture that surrounds the language and its people.
Chapter 3:
When Slattery talks about the theme of autobiography and the practice of currere, he emphasizes the importance of beginning with individual experience and then make broader connections. Placing importance on the interconnectedness of all experience, he additionally emphasizes using experiences and interests of the students in order to present the knowledge that needs to be learned in an engaging way. I always think back to my educational experiences, and those from which I learned the most were always intertwined with or involved examples involving something that interested me, like competition, sports, movies, etc. In my own classes, I always try to learn as much about the students as possible in order to include their interests in many activities that we do along with explanations of certain grammar points.We could do a much better job with using an autobiographical perspective when planning lessons. Unfortunately, I feel that right now I cannot change what our curriculum is, but as long as we are using it, I am going to relate it to the students as much as possible. A quick anecdote from today: many of the students were struggling with negative expressions, and one of the ways that really worked in order to explain what to do was talk to those struggling individually using their interests to create personalized scenarios. It was very effective!
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