This Spring semester I had the opportunity to teach the first version of UMass Amherst’s Spanish and Portuguese Integrative Experience sequence.  Its stated purpose is to give our students an opportunity to reflect upon the way in which their General Education courses relate to their major and personal development as future professionals.  As the University gave us the task of developing such a course, our program’s first reaction was that we should link this course to education abroad, assuming that such an experience would give students a real-world opportunity to use their knowledge of the Spanish language and culture.  Aware that not all students would be willing or able to study abroad, we added as an alternative the possibility of doing service learning or an internship in a Spanish-language context.  We conceived of these last two options as a less desirable, but necessary, alternative, but in my development and teaching of the course I realized the significance of community engagement and service-learning in education.  This realization came not only from teaching the class, but also from having been a Service-Learning Fellow in an excellent program lead by John Reiff, Carol Soules and Dave Neely from UMass’ office of Civic Engagement and Service-Learning.

Teaching this class for the first tame was intimidating at the beginning as this was a new experience for me and, despite the well-planned syllabus, I had to leave some room for improvisation.  Yet, despite my first concerns, I was very pleased by its development.  I was positively surprised by finding out that most of my students had already visited Spain or Latin America, and that many of them had long experience with service to the community.  The class gave us an opportunity to share experiences and concerns, and I finished the semester convinced that this group created bonds that they will take with them as they continue their studies and, hopefully, after they graduate.  We also were fortunate to have Ellen Correa (from Civic Engagement and Service-Learning), Caroline Gould (Career Services) and Cristina Sosa (from International Programs) visit our class and engage our students on a personal level.  These visits encouraged students to set up visits with them and explore ways in which they can use the services of their offices to advance their studies and careers.

I feel privileged for having had the opportunity to teach this class and look forward to seeing the way in which my students use this blog to continue the dialogue we began during the Spring.