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Creating Opportunities for Communication and Cultural Immersion

Delbarton School, New Jersey and Cudec Universidad Multicultural, Mexico

Summary

The last couple of years have been very challenging for Alma Lopez-Holder of Delbarton School. She loves to teach Spanish, but first COVID, and then significant changes in the school’s schedule have taken their toll on her confidence in her program and ability to uphold her end of the curriculum in the Language Department. These days, with longer classes but fewer weekly meetings, it’s hard to get the optimal amount of time with the students for everyday practice in small doses. Luckily, with the introduction of Level Up Village’s language exchange programs, Alma was able to give her students an exciting and innovative way to practice more Spanish outside of her classroom and open up the array of topics to which her students can be exposed. Overall, Level Up Village significantly enhanced Alma’s Spanish classes and gave her students something to look forward to: real situations where their Spanish studies could come in handy.

“Level Up Village helps me cover things that I can’t do in the classroom; what I can’t get to in-depth, they can experience from their videos. For students who were interested in the language, seeing the bilingualism of the kids in Mexico promoted self-motiviation and they were much more interested in learning Spanish.”

Alma Lopez-Holder

Challenges

Alma faced a significant schedule change giving teachers longer classes but less frequent class meetings during the week, overall lack of practice from students, not enough class time using the target language with students, and language programs without any tracking, where kids who excel can often by slowed by unmotivated students.

Solutions

Alma started running virtual exchanges with Level Up Village, paired her classes with a school in Mexico, provided supplemental authentic language usage that could happen outside the classroom, which was a motivating factor for students to strengthen their language skills.

Results

Students were impressed with and motivated by the quality of second language learning from their partner school in Mexico, the department at large benefitted from the new variety of language practice offered by the exchange, and student engagement and proficiency increased.

Conclusion

Alma Lopez-Holder, a Spanish teacher at Delbarton School, was facing several challenges due to changes in the school’s schedule and the lack of practice from students who had been learning remotely during the pandemic lockdown. In addition, some students were not motivated to learn Spanish, while others had a strong foundation in the language. Alma found a solution in Level Up Village, which provided virtual exchanges with a school in Mexico, giving her students an opportunity to practice more Spanish outside of the classroom and be exposed to different topics. Level Up Village significantly enhanced Alma’s Spanish classes, motivated her students to strengthen their language skills, and increased student engagement and proficiency. The virtual exchange allowed students to participate in real and meaningful dialogue with native Spanish speakers, exposed them to more real speech, and gave them a forum to utilize their growing Spanish language skills. Alma’s students were impressed with and motivated by the quality of second language learning from the partner school, and the department at large benefitted from the new variety of language practice offered by the exchange.