It's a Small World (after all)...

About two years ago, I signed up for an account with ePals, because (as the site says), I wanted to take my school global. Sadly, I haven't done anything with that account as I was waiting for the right class. I was intimidated by the thought of managing 137 different students and making sure no one offended anyone else, thereby starting a global war of my own! However, this year I think I've found the perfect group to use this program.

In the beginning, I thought I would like to search for a school in Europe (Spain, specifically) but since I have an affinity for all things Guatemalan, I have found a school in Guatemala with which I'd like to build this relationship. My worry is whether or not to look at peer-level (age appropriate?) students for my students to communicate with or choose younger students who might be a little more patient with my Spanish-language learners.

My students (as most teens are) tend to lean on the narcissistic side of things. What's in it for them? Why should they do this? What's the point? The point is to make their worlds a little bit larger and realize that there's actual PEOPLE who live somewhere else, do some of the same things they do and SPEAK A DIFFERENT LANGUAGE, but at the same time share some of the same thoughts they do about things like television, music or politics. Since almost all kids like to talk about themselves...this one should be a slam-dunk! :)

Who needs to travel when you have TECHNOLOGY?

In reading Brave New Digital World, by Robert Blake, I was touched by one single quote: "Technology, then, if used wisely, could play a major role in enhancing L2 learners' contact with the target language, especially in the absence of study abroad" (2).


I re-read the quote a few times and looked at it from differing points, before I really saw the word ENHANCE and not read it to mean REPLACE study abroad.  Obviously, nothing compares to standing on top of a hill looking down at a village in Guatemala that sits at the foot of a volcano or ordering in an ACTUAL (and not just authentic) Mexican restaurant.  However, I teach in a high-need urban area.  In reality, how many of my students are going to be able to afford to study abroad when they're worried about meals for the week?  By my curriculum being enriched by the sights, sounds and possible interactions with people from other cultures, maybe my students can escape their own reality for a bit and gain some of the innocence they seem to have lost by experiencing some things for the first time! Skype has proven to be quite the tool for this type of interaction and I hope when the time comes, my students are as receptive and excited as I am!


I see teaching a LOTE as one part communication and one part culture.  You can't truly understand one without the other.  For my students to be able to see even a bit of the life outside of their sleepy little town could mean the world to them. It's essential to me to learn about other cultures and I want to help them not to be so ethnocentric and see that it's okay that people do things differently.  After all, if we were all the same, what fun would that be?