It’s been a while

About a year and a half ago, I left the classroom after teaching for 26 years. I took a job as content manager for the Spanish program at a school district. I have created and collected a number of supports for Spanish teachers, but the bulk of my time is spent on administrative things and not a lot of time directly supporting teachers in their craft.

What I loved most about being a teacher was the ability to be creative in unit and lesson planning. Sadly, I have not been able to find much time for creative pursuits. I do not wish to return to the classroom, so I need to find a way to have fulfilling work until I reach the age where I can start drawing some retirement funds. Since I have partial teaching pensions in two different states that I am not allowed to combine, I can’t fully retire for a while.

While I try to figure out how to make my work feel meaningful, I will share with you a few things I’ve collected over the last year and a half.

If you are looking for more listening resources, check out https://easyespanol.org/blog/spanish-podcast/ The podcasts are a reasonable length at 5-6 minutes. These audios would be for intermediate or advanced students. You can listen to and download the audios for free, but if you want the transcript, you have to pay for a subscription.

A trick for creating the transcript for an audio if your school provides you with a Microsoft 360 account: Log in to your Microsoft online account, then follow these instructions. It works better than anything else I’ve found online, but you will still need to proofread.

These interviews on the street by Easy Spanish are interesting for upper level students or heritage language learners. They have Spanish and English subtitles. I particularly enjoyed the one about reggaeton. You can create a transcript by clicking on the three horizontal dots under the video and selecting “show transcript.”

If you have the transcript for an audio, here are some good ideas for listening comprehension activities:

Señora Chase: Interpretive Quick Quizzes

Creative Language Class: Listening Chart

TPRS Witch: Very Narrow Listening

Another fairly new listening resource for novice and intermediate students is the ¡Cuéntame! podcast with transcripts. Garbanzo, published by Martina Bex, also has free podcasts and includes handouts.

One unfortunate thing about the internet is that great sites for teachers come and go, and if we do not download audios or videos, they might disappear. One terrible loss for Spanish teachers was the audio program Veinte Mundos. I found the site mostly intact through the Wayback Machine. Not all the audios are available, but the majority of the ones I tried were. One website I was not able to find on the Wayback Machine is the former radio program Nuevos Horizontes. I used a lot of those audios with my heritage language students.

I hope you find these resources useful and I hope not to let another 18 months go by without another post!

The partner activity conundrum

As I wrote in my last post, I am trying to get back to some sense of normalcy in the classroom after nearly a year of pandemic teaching, and one of the things that I have not done this year is partner work. As I ponder how to re-incorporate partner work in a safe way in the language classroom, I am again faced with the question of whether partner activities can be meaningful and relevant. In my post from ten years ago, “partner activities = junk food?“, I referenced Terry Waltz’s assertion that “communicative pair activities are the McDonalds of language teaching” (referenced HERE). In essence, there is no “more knowledgeable other” when students work together, so they are giving and receiving input with errors. Chris Stolz also notes that the prevailing attitude among language educators is that we must “get them talking” as early and often as possible, downplaying the role of comprehensible input as a necessary precursor to output.

I’m still searching, and I do not have concrete answers, but here is my research so far:

Martina Bex comes through again with ideas for CI-leaning partner activities https://comprehensibleclassroom.com/category/partner-activities/

Martina also comments on whether to assess interpersonal speaking at lower levels, and how she does so https://comprehensibleclassroom.com/2015/09/17/interpersonal-speaking-activities-and-assessments/

Here is a partner game called Siéntate, and I think it could work in socially distanced environments https://senorachase.com/2019/11/19/sientate-a-comprehensible-input-partner-game/

Here are some ideas for interpersonal speaking https://misclaseslocas.blogspot.com/search?q=interpersonal

#7 on Spanish Mama’s adaptations for distance learning focuses on interpersonal communication https://spanishmama.com/10-ways-to-teach-spanish/

Here is something called Timed-Think-Talk http://www.lynnjohnston.com/?p=2913

Srta. Spanish as a list of activities on her website: https://srtaspanish.com/2019/12/09/partner-activities-for-spanish-class/ and https://srtaspanish.com/2019/12/19/reverse-running-dictation/

One of my favorites that I need to dust off this year is the ESP activity described by Helena Curtain https://nanopdf.com/download/target-partner-language-activities-wiki-copy_pdf

I’d also like to re-visit Kagan Cooperative Learning structures to see what might work in a socially distanced environment https://sirblois.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/cooperative-learning-activities.pdf

While input is vitally important, Merrill Swain’s Output Hypothesis asserts that at some point students must focus on output with intentionality. The question is how to make it meaningful and contextualized for the student rather than a formulaic exercise with no communicative purpose (like many textbook partner activities).

At the end of the day, I think I’m OK with students’ speaking imperfect Spanish with each other. John DeMado argues that fossilization of errors only occurs when language learning ceases. In other words, errors are a process in language acquisition and tend to resolve themselves as more language is acquired. My concern is creating speaking activities that are engaging and meaningful for the student, and hopefully authentic to some extent.

I’m eager to hear what ideas all of you have for meaningful interpersonal interaction during CO-VID!

Bringing back the J-Factor

We returned to all in-person instruction this week, with some students choosing to stay remote and attending via Zoom. For fear of CO-VID spread, the first things to go in my lessons were games, as they usually require students to move around or share physical materials. I’m really missing the J-Factor in the classroom that games provided, however, so I have been exploring ways to adapt traditional games to socially distanced and remote learning environments.

Here are links to some games that I have found:

BINGO

https://sradentlinger.wordpress.com/2015/03/19/csctfl15-idea-share-lets-bring-bingo-back-in-vogue/

https://comprehensibleclassroom.com/2020/05/17/quick-grid-bingo-synchronous-learning/

Rip/Strip Bingo

Sentence Bingo

Bingo writing

Human Bingo

FLYSWATTER GAME

https://comprehensibleclassroom.com/2020/11/04/flyswatter-matamoscas-game-virtual/

MUSIC

https://spanishplans.org/2021/03/02/music-video-activities/

https://elmundodebirch.wordpress.com/category/activities-with-music/

https://misclaseslocas.blogspot.com/2017/06/what-to-do-with-song-in-spanish-class.html

https://spanishplans.org/2021/03/01/beyond-the-lyrics/

QUIZLET

https://srtaspanish.com/2018/03/14/quizlet-live-variations/

https://srtaspanish.com/2017/12/02/scaffolding-heads-up-with-quizlet/

https://misclaseslocas.com/quick-tip-quizlet-live-relay-race/

PYRAMID VOCABULARY GAME

explanation: https://www.theteachertoolkit.com/index.php/tool/10000-pyramid

template in Spanish:

piramide-vocab-game-templateDownload

TWO TRUTHS AND A LIE

https://comprehensibleclassroom.com/2011/12/02/mentirosopq/

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Dos-Verdades-y-Una-Mentira-6070397

BREAKOUT ROOMS

https://comprehensibleclassroom.com/2017/01/08/breakout-activity-in-spanish-for-breakoutedu-newbies/

https://supersenora.com/escape-room-spanish-class/

“Algo muy grave va a suceder en este pueblo”

I am teaching the subjunctive in a third year high school clase this year, and wanted to use Juanes’ song “A Dios le pido.” I also wanted a short story to keep with a Colombia theme, which made me think of “Un día de estos” by Gabriel García Márquez but with hybrid learning during the pandemic, I would not have the time needed to spend to make the text comprehensible for third year students. Instead, I chose a story by GGM that I had paired with Fernando Botero in an art unit in previous years called “Algo muy grave va a suceder en este pueblo.” It is a brief story, and the vocabulary and grammar are not complicated.

I first saw the story in the Imagina textbook, which has pre-reading and comprehension questions.

Here is the text of the story.

There are a number of flashcard sets for the story on Quizlet.

There are some free comprehension questions at Teachers Pay Teachers, as well as materials to purchase.

I found a good illustrated version of the story at Slide Share.

I also found a nice animated version on youtube:

There is a nice illustrated biography of Gabriel García Márquez on youtube:

Re-envisioning Thematic Units

This year I am working with the Imagina textbook for IB Spanish B, year 1. I am struggling with making the thematic vocabulary from the textbook chapter meaningful while bringing in texts that relate to the theme, as I find the vocabulary in the texts do not typically contain many words from the vocabulary list. I have observed that the words that come up in multiple texts (such as texts from released IB exams) do not fit under any particular theme and thus are not included in typical thematic vocabulary lists. My choices are to stick with the textbook vocabulary list and know that I cannot meaningfully teach many of the words, or create my own vocabulary list and lose the ready-made textbook vocabulary exercises.

I believe an alternative lies in how we create a thematic unit. Rather than working from a topic then creating vocabulary lists and locating texts and other resources, I would suggest choosing a meaningful text (written, audio, visual) then creating the unit and related vocabulary around that, not only choosing words and grammatical concepts that relate to the theme but also high-impact words and structures that appear over and over in authentic texts. This would lead to more contextualized and meaningful use of vocabulary and grammar, which would lead to a deeper learning. I have been hoping to find a program where I could input texts and a word list would be created so I could create a list of most useful words. So far, I’ve found a website called Text Analyzer that creates a list of words in a text and the number of occurences of each word. While I enjoy a rousing flyswatter game to mix things up, games like that separate language from context and are not an authentic use of language.

I can envision a unit created with a text by using a Radio Ambulante podcast called, “La importancia de llamarse Ernesto.” In the podcast, a young man living in Mexico finds out that his parents are not those who reared him, but that his real parents are Puerto Rican activists. Using this audio as the core of my unit, I could explore the themes of identity and family ties. I could also teach the history of Puerto Rico and have students debate the future of Puerto Rico as a U.S. state or an independent country. I could also incorporate culture and traditions of Puerto Rico.

While authentic texts might be out of reach of lower levels, units or lessons can be anchored around resources intended for language learners, such as Mary Glasgow magazines or TPRS novels, or even a video clip, photo, or work of art.

I think Janice Holter Kittock’s adaptation of content based instruction, called content based storytelling, is a great example of leading with content and providing the language tools needed to explore it. Another educator leading the way in the use of authentic resources to anchor units is Kara Jacobs.

I chose Content Based Instruction, or Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) as my final paper for my master’s degree. In retrospect, when I think of the lessons I taught using this method, I believe they were not as effective as they could have been because I was trying to fit content into a traditional textbook chapter rather than letting the content be the anchor of the unit.

While I absolutely love lesson planning and creating meaningful units, I can understand the allure of traditional textbooks that provide a plethora of (not-so-great) activities. However, I think having a strong set of units anchored in texts would increase student engagement and language acquisition, and not to mention save tens of thousands of dollars in textbooks that quickly become outdated. I would argue that the money could be better spent on things like Mary Glasgow magazines, TPRS novels, and Teachers Pay Teachers materials (although not all TpT are of the same level of quality; buyer beware!).

This year I have compromised by using the textbook for the unit theme and the grammar, then locate texts to anchor the lessons. I am not teaching all of the vocabulary words, but I am teaching other more useful vocabulary (I like to call them $1,000 words) that arise naturally and repeatedly across a variety of texts. I have also been able to incorporate grammar in a more authentic way, to some extent. I feel I’m a more effective teacher this year than I’ve ever been and I look forward to growing even more!

La libertad de la prensa

This year I am at a new school, and the textbook Imagina is used for the two years of IB Spanish. The book itself is rather devoid of useful content, so I am following the vocabulary and grammar for each chapter, then supplementing the best I can, aligning activities to the IB exam when I can.

Lección 3 of Imagina is “Los medios de comunicación” and my school uses an older version of the book, so the vocabulary focuses around the press, TV and film, and newspapers. I believe the more updated version includes social media and the Internet.

The textbook itself has almost nothing relevant to the theme to foment meaningful discussion, so I decided to explore the theme of the dangers that journalists face, particularly in Mexico. I sent out inquiries on my various Facebook groups and scoured the Internet so I could avoid re-inventing the wheel. Unfornately, no ready-made materials fell in my lap, so I want to share what I found and created or adapted for my students.

There are a lot of articles on the Internet about the topic, but they are much too difficult for my students, who are in in Year 1 of IB (essentially Spanish III+ students). I could adapt them, but I did not want to spend a lot of time editing a text. So I decided to see what Radio Ambulante had to offer. These are long and rather difficult in their original form, but I think that they can be scaffolded, and the teacher can choose how much of the podcast that students listen to. Also, the transcriptions are available in Spanish and English for extra support, as well as in video format on youtube.

The following podcasts are related to freedom of the press or freedom of speech:

• https://radioambulante.org/en/audio-en/it-was-the-state 
• https://radioambulante.org/en/audio-en/we-interrupt-this-broadcast
• https://radioambulante.org/en/audio-en/closed-signal
• https://radioambulante.org/en/audio-en/la-union
• https://radioambulante.org/en/audio-en/the-rebellious-student  

I decided to use “La Unión” which is about a man without any training in journalism who wrote his own newspaper for the town of Medellín de Bravo in the state of Veracruz, Mexico. Here is my student handout for the podcast. I will be assigning it in parts when we get back from Christmas break. The question formats align with those on the listening section of the IB Spanish B exam.

la-union-radio-ambulanteDownload

Video version with Spanish subtitles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcrl6qBaaPc

Video version with English subtitles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUy_qW3HQHI

NewsELA has articles in Spanish as well as English with comprehension questions that can be accessed with a free subscription. A couple of them relate to freedom of expression. I have not yet decided whether I will be using them, but I think the student journalists one might go well with the rebellious student podcast.

• https://newsela.com/read/streetart-humanrights-spanish/id/12229/ 
• https://newsela.com/read/defending-student-journalists-spanish/id/32180/ 

I created a hook to introduce the topic of freedom of the press next week. I searched the Internet for photos, infographics, and political cartoons related to the topic for students to talk or write about.

libertad-de-prensa-hookDownload

This resource is not teach-ready, but there is an activist group for reporters in Mexico called Artículo 19. They include information about Moisés Sánchez. Here is their website: https://articulo19.org/periodistasasesinados/

Jorge Ramos, well-known Latino reporter, did a TED Talk about freedom of the press. Some may view it as political since he discusses being thrown out of a Trump press conference, but I think he has very good things to say about freedom of the press in the United States. The video is in Spanish with the option for English and Spanish subtitles. A teacher posted a worksheet in Spanish for viewing it on Teachers Pay Teachers for $2. I purchased it but have not yet used it.

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/TED-Jorge-Ramos-Porque-los-periodistas-tienen-la-obligacion-de-desafiar-el-pode-4625772

Because students most likely do not know who Jorge Ramos is, I copied and pasted parts of the biographical information on his website and added a couple of photos. The words in bold are words from the chapter’s vocabulary list.

jorge-ramos-avalosDownload

I am hoping these resources will be useful; I will update with how the lessons go!

Back to the textbook

This year I returned to the classroom after a year off trying out a different educational role. I landed at a school where the textbook is the curriculum, so I am in the process of adjusting from working with heritage language learners where I abandoned vocabulary lists and lengthy grammar lessons to working with second language learners using long vocabulary lists and grammar-centered instruction.

I confess that I am struggling to make all the vocabulary and grammar meaningful and embedded in communicative contexts. I am trying to find a way to be true to my beliefs about language instruction and acquisition, but also meet expectations to have students ready for the next level and the next teacher.

I am attempting to make the most of the textbook and ancillaries as well as scouring my old files and the Internet to create activities that focus on meaning, and to keep communicative learning objectives at the forefront. One of the dangers with textbooks that it is easy to plan without a clear learning outcome in mind. The lesson plan becomes a string of textbook activities that lead to a paper-based test at the end, devoid of intentionality, and language separated from meaning.

I realized after a week into remote learning that I had not included an exit ticket in my lessons. Exit tickets help keep me focused on the learning objective that I state at the beginning of the lesson. I need to get back to that when we start hybrid learning next week.

After 7 years teaching at a charter school, returning to a public school has been quite a transition. Both charters and public schools have their pros and cons. One aspect of charter schools that is missing in my public school is instructional coaching. Without it, I feel teachers are left to their own devices as far as how skillful they become in designing and executing quality lessons and assessments.

I do not have any experience as a TPRS teacher, but I have been reading up on how TPRS can be incorporated into textbooks for some CI inspiration.

Fluency Matters: https://fluencymatters.com/iflt18-can-you-tie-your-textbook-to-ci/

from one of my idols, Terry Waltz: http://terrywaltz.com/tprs-from-a-textbook/

Martina Bex: https://comprehensibleclassroom.com/2012/12/08/textbooks-and-tprs/

Languagely: https://languageley.wordpress.com/2017/06/11/tprs-with-a-textbook-is-really-easy/

Srta. Spanish: https://srtaspanish.com/2019/01/06/teaching-ci-with-a-textbook/

Adapting a textbooks for TPRS: https://prezi.com/kkbmpl5t3omv/adapting-a-textbook-for-tprs/

Comprehensifying your textbook: https://comprehensibleclassroom.com/2015/03/15/comprehensify-your-textbook-readings/

So far I’m spending hours to plan a single hour-long lesson, though I must admit that is not terribly new. Hopefully I’ll be able to work more efficiently soon! But I feel confident I am creating a quality product that stays true to my beliefs.

Update: One way I’ve been tying the grammar practice and meaningful input is using graded readers that I found at my school, though they are older books. Some of them are, “Un verano en México,” “Viviana va a México” and “Realidades y fantasía.”

 

 

 

 

 

Can listening comprehension activities in the classroom be authentic?

I have some time this summer that I do not usually have, and I am revisiting some topics I have not previously been able to explore fully.

I believe that listening comprehension exercises are worthwhile in the language classroom, using both didactic and authentic sources. However, what I noticed about textbooks is that the exercises were designed solely to practice listening utilizing whatever vocabulary and grammar was the focus in that particular chapter, with clear right or wrong answers. I would sometimes see and hear students getting answers from other students, as getting the right answer on the paper was more important to them than really understanding what was heard. At the end of the listening exercise, we went over the answers and that was it, on to the next activity.

I wondered how I could make listening exercises more meaningful and integrated into the lesson. I started creating pre-listening activities, as one would for a reading activity. Pre-listening activities might be a visual or written prompt to get students thinking about the topic of the audio or video. It might also be an activity to prepare students for specific vocabulary they would need to comprehend the audio. Sometimes it is background information about the topic of the video that students need in order to understand what they are hearing.

I have not been particularly creative with listening comprehension questions, limiting myself to multiple choice, matching, true-false, and short answer. This is something I would like to work on. I would also like to get out of the lower levels of Bloom’s taxonomy in my questions in order to delve deeper into the information presented.

The post-listening consisted of going over the answers, as always, but I wanted to tie the information in the listening activity to the overall lesson. Since I was teaching AP Spanish at the time, I would include an AP-style question that asked what the audio and a reading or graph had in common, or how they differed. I also had a cultural question each week in preparation for the AP cultural comparison, with prompts for students to use what they learned about the topic from listening activities to create their comparison. I’m not sure that was enough to get students to apply the information from the listen activities to the cultural comparison.

I have found several resources for teaching and practicing listening comprehension, mostly from websites for teachers of English as a second language that I think would be applicable for any language. I plan to utilize them to make listening comprehension practice more engaging and purpose-driven.

One thought I have is to write a student objective specifically for the listening activity. For example, “After listening to this new report, you will be able to explain the incident that occurred at the Prado Museum.” Another example would be, “After viewing with TV weather forecast, you will be able to name what clothing you will need for the next few days.”

The site Hancock McDonald English Language Teaching has an article called, “Authentic Listening Step by Step” that has suggestions for pre-, during, and post-listening activities.

Another useful article with ideas for listening activities is a Listening Strategies_booklet from Ana C. Zobler, an article I received through the InterCom weekly digest from CASLS.

Englishpost.org has articles on pre-, during, and post-listening exercises.

TeachingEnglish.org.uk presents a framework for listening activities and uses a song as an example.

Spanishplayground.net has ideas for listening activities that could be geared to younger learners.

The now archived website Teaching Spanish Easily provides useful information about listening activities assessing listening comprehension.

The British Council has a video about assessing listening.

I think making connections (text-to-text, text-to-self, and text-to-world) used with reading comprehension could also work with audio/video sources.

 

Teaching “La hija del sastre”

I assisted a colleague in preparing to teach “La hija del sastre” and I must confess that I became so fascinated with what I learned about modern-day issues in Spain caused by the Spanish Civil War that I wish I could have taught the book myself!

I typically do a good deal of research before teaching a topic, and through research for this TPRS novel I learned about a law in Spain called, “La ley de la memoria histórica.” Its intention is to recognize the victims on both sides of the Spanish Civil War and to condemn the fascist regime of Francisco Franco.

I will share with you here some very interesting material that I would use to create lessons to accompany “La hija del sastre.” The are resources and not necessarily ready for student consumption; the language would be way above the level of the students. I would love to someday have the time to turn these resources into teaching materials. If I do, I will post them!

La ley de la memoria histórica:

Here are the main points of the law: https://www.publico.es/actualidad/diez-claves-ley-memoria-historica.html

Here are links to teaching resources about the law: https://neiljones.org/2013/06/30/la-ley-de-memoria-historica/

Some interesting teaching units: http://historicalmemory-spain.weebly.com/units.html

If you do an image search for “la de la memoria histórica” you will find political vignettes for both sides of the issue that students can interpret. There are also several here: http://pepeolivercabrera.blogspot.com/2009/11/la-memoria-historica-34-anos-de-la.html

La Valle de los Caídos: I visited this site with students many years ago, and much to my surprise, I saw in the news online that the Spanish government had decided to remove Franco’s remains from the site. This caused quite a stir in Spain, as you can imagine.

Here is a news article about the exhumation: https://www.elsaltodiario.com/valle-caidos/isaac-rosa-asi-sacaron-franco-valle-caidos

This article talks about the protests about moving Franco’s body with photos and a video of people doing Fascist salutes (terrifying!): https://www.lavanguardia.com/politica/20180715/45920698012/protesta-valle-caidos-exhumacion-franco.html

Removal of monuments of Franco:

Here is a worksheet created by a teacher using a news article: https://mfljones.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/la-operacic3b3n-se-desarrollc3b3-esta-madrugad1.pdf

This is an article in Spanish from NewsELA about the removal of Confederate monuments in the U.S.; I think this would be a good compare/contrast or debate topic (you need to create a free account to access the article): https://newsela.com/read/confederate-statues-procon-spanish/id/30707/ 

For more historical topics, students could explore images and songs, and the involvement of U.S. citizens in the conflict.

Spanish Civil War propaganda posters:

• • https://library.ucsd.edu/speccoll/visfront/intro.html
  • http://emergingamerica.org/model-lesson-plans-propaganda-posters-of-the-spanish-civil-war/
  • https://rebeccambender.wordpress.com/2014/10/28/propaganda-spanish-civil-war
  • https://www.tes.com/en-us/teaching-resource/spanish-civil-war-propaganda-12246421
  • http://thenhier.ca/fr/node/12962.html

the Abraham Lincoln Brigade:

• brief video in English that gives a good summary of the ALB: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqFQHOCXMf4
• lesson plans in English about the Spanish Civil War and the ALB: http://www.alba-valb.org/resources/lessons

Patriotic songs from the Spanish Civil War:

• • https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Cara-al-Sol-Song-Lyrics-and-Questions-for-Spanish-Civil-War-1093179 (Fascistas)
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqarvkV3puI (republicanos)

Another song with worksheets: https://profdespagnol.blogspot.com/2018/09/madre-anoche-en-las-trincheras-guerra.html

Here is a link to ideas for teaching “La hija del sastre” by chapter: https://fluencymatters.com/teaching-about-the-spanish-civil-war-with-la-hija-del-sastre/

 

Teaching about El Salvador

As I shared in a previous post, my husband is from El Salvador, and I have visited several times. I am in my first year out of the classroom after 25 years of teaching, but I feel the need to return to the academic world, though not necessarily as a teacher.

Last year I assisted in preparing a class that included the TPRS novel “Vida y muerte en la Mara Salvatrucha.” While the book is fine, I realized that the majority of the teaching resources that exist are around El Salvador’s civil war and the Salvadoran gang Mara Salvatrucha. I think the focus on these two violent topics do not give students a full picture of El Salvador and its people.

Additionally, this year I am working in a bilingual school, and the focus seems primarily on Mexican culture and traditions.

These two experiences have led me to want to create children’s books and teaching materials about El Salvador, though I am not sure where to begin.

Some ideas I have are around the following topics:

Write children’s books on the holidays in El Salvador, such as Semana Santa, Día de los Difuntos, Navidad, el Año Nuevo, el Día de la Cruz.

Foods from El Salvador. Pupusas are becoming more recognized and are quite delicious. They could even be made in the classroom. Something I find interesting is that foods with the same name in Mexico and El Salvador are actually quite different. For example, a quesadilla is a sweet bread made from cheese. Enchiladas and pasteles are also completely different foods in El Salvador than in Mexico.

Salarrué was an artist and writer from El Salvador. The language he uses in his short stories are hard to understand, but I think I could re-write a few in simpler language.

Fernando Llort’s art has become a symbol of El Salvador. In fact, his designs have been adopted by Salvadoran tourism.

Roque Dalton was an poet and dissident who was murdered during the civil war. Two great poems are “Como tú” and “Alta hora de la noche.”

Prudencia Ayala is known as a feminist and figure for women’s rights.

Salvadoran folktales such as la Siguanaba and el Cadejo, but told in simple Spanish.

El Salvador’s major products are sugar cane and coffee. Two tourist industries that El Salvador is cultivating are cacao and indigo (añil).

One rather disturbing thing I observed while in El Salvador is that there seems to be a high number of people who suffer from renal problems. I surmise this is related to pesticides used on crops like sugar cane but studies have not been definitive. Medical care is also lacking.

El Salvador has many of the things that places like Mexico have to offer, but on a much smaller scale. Unfortunately, El Salvador currently has a limited tourist industry and they have not cared for their nature and wildlife like Costa Rica has. Archaeological exploration is small scale. I would love to see El Salvador invest more in these areas.

There are some amazingly beautiful places in El Salvador. I hope one day soon the current violence in El Salvador subsides so that teachers and students can appreciate what El Slavador has to offer!