Category Archives: Massachusetts

Reach out to your professors and advisors, they are here to help you succeed!

When I first got to UMass, I was very shy about advocating for myself. When I had any type of issue, I would usually avoid it instead of talking to my advisor (Luis Marentes). I have since come to realize the importance of meeting with advisors and appreciate all Luis has done for me over the past 4 years I’ve been here. As I’ve gone through many ups and downs during my time at UMass, I think the most important thing that I’ve learned is to not be afraid to advocate for myself. If I don’t do it, no one else will do it for me.

This semester is my last semester at UMass. This past September, I was enrolled in an intensive intermediate Italian course. It turns out that I hated it and needed to find a new class to switch into fast before the end of the add-drop period. With no luck finding anything on my own, I decided to reach out to Patricia Gubitosi, who I’ve had the pleasure of having as a professor and advisor. I told her about my dilemma, and she put me in contact with Danielle Thomas of the Spanish and Portuguese department. Professor Thomas does a lot of community work with Spanish speaking communities in and around Amherst. When I met with Professor Thomas, she told me that I could do an independent study with her. I had no idea what an independent study was before our meeting. I honestly thought it was something that graduate students do. During our meeting, she told me she was working on a research study, looking at the linguistic backgrounds of native and non-native Spanish speakers. She proposed that I could help with the study by doing data collection. Basically, my job would be interviewing Spanish speaking participants and doing several speaking activities with them. At first, I was a little bit nervous because I’m naturally a timid person, and feel like I’m not the best at talking with people. But I wanted to give it a chance because I knew it would get me out of my comfort zone. Continue reading →

Mentor opportunity with local non-profit

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Be a short-term mentor for university students from Latin America!!

Every summer in July and every winter in January, a non-profit called ITD (Institute for Training and Development, Inc.) manages and runs a Study of the U.S. Institutes Program (SUSI), a prestigious program that is sponsored by the U.S. Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. State Department. The program entails five weeks of intensive academic study in U.S. Policymaking, Entrepreneurship, Economic Empowerment, Leadership, and Politics. The highly competitive scholarship is awarded to twenty undergraduate students each time, all young leaders from Mexico and Central and South American countries. In the summers, the students who come to ITD are from Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala; In the winters, they are from Chile, Uruguay, Argentina, and Brazil. The students live in Amherst for three and half of the five weeks of their program, and attend specialized lectures at Amherst College and at ITD. Continue reading →

Studying Portuguese as a Brazilian-American at UMass

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When I first came to UMass, I was worried that I would not find the right major and regret my choice after four years. After many advising meetings, I decided to pursue and public health and Spanish double major. We have all been told that being fluent in another language would benefit us in our future so majoring in Spanish made sense. However, I am also fluent in Portuguese and was raised by parents who immigrated to the United States from Brazil. My feelings towards my family heritage have always been something that I have struggled with. When I was younger I did not appreciate the language barrier and felt different from all of my American friends. I was also constantly deterred from speaking in Portuguese with my Brazilian friends because people would wrongfully assume that we were talking poorly about them. After growing up in a diverse town, I moved to a majority-white small town for high school. There I was confronted head-on of how different I felt around people who grew up privileged and followed a culture that seemed so unfamiliar to me. Although I was raised in the United States, my home is everything but “American.” I only began to truly value my heritage once I realized that although I was a minority, my culture was what led me to become the person I am today and was grateful that I did not stray from the culture despite several societal attempts to deter me from my familial customs. Continue reading →

Learning how to teach kids

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I’m sure a lot of you are interested in teaching and probably already have lots of experience. But for me I don’t have a lot of experience and this was a great learning moment for me!

Last semester I took a class that was about teaching theory, but was also a service learning class. Every week we spent one hour studying different philosophies about teaching and the next hour was spent making lesson plans for Saturday. On Saturday mornings we would go to a Brazilian church in Springfield and give Portuguese lessons to kids of the congregation (who were all heritage speakers). By far, one of the most difficult obstacles to overcome was motivating the kids. They were all wonderful kids, kind, well behaved, but they just did not want to be there. They would tell us bluntly that they did not want to be there and they did not want to do any work. As a teacher, I had no idea how to respond to that. I understood their sentiments and I felt bad for them–there I was, standing there in front of these tired 12 year olds on a Saturday morning, looking foolish with these worksheets and vocabulary lists in my hands. Of course they wouldn’t want to do them. What kid would? Continue reading →

How I found my passion through the Spanish major

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I am currently an interpreter at Crocker Farm Elementary in Amherst. I work with first-grade students and love every second of it. I originally had plans to be a Spanish teacher in high school or middle school, but that age is really tough. I like working with younger students. I thought my major in Spanish would only allow me one job, a Spanish teacher. However, being an interpreter, I learned that there is so much more I can do with my major. There are kids that really need extra support and my major allows me to give them that. Continue reading →

How different disciplines culminated into my senior honors thesis

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During my time at UMass, some classes that I took at have often had overlapping themes even though they were completely different disciplines. For example, SPAN394 (part 1 of IE), my service-learning course: Tutoring in Schools, and my thesis seminar, Conquest by law. A lot of SPAN394 was spent discussing different perspectives, entering different cultures, going to Holyoke Bound, and also service learning. As my IE experience I chose to take a service-learning course tutoring in schools and became a tutor at the Amherst-Pelham Regional Middle School. In addition to tutoring in the classroom, it was paired with a weekly seminar that highlighted how to teach to different learning skills and also discussed the diversity of students. We discussed the possible histories of students that would affect their learning such as being an English learning (ELL) student, or living in poverty. One class was dedicated to the low graduation rates of Latino students in schools where most students were people of color, but most teachers were white and held little expectations from their students. Also, ELL students in non-bilingual programs often were behind the curve but teachers did not lend as much as help as the students truly needed, either because of lack of interest or the lack of time and resources available. Continue reading →

The Spanish major means more than learning the language

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My motivation for choosing to major in Spanish stemmed from how much I enjoyed my Spanish classes in high school. Although the grammar and vocabulary lessons never quite thrilled me, I loved learning about the history and culture of the Spanish-speaking world and still do. I felt that I took to the language well, so might as well major in it.

In this class, however, I’ve learned that the Spanish major means more than a perfect knowledge of Spanish vocabulary, more than mastering the rough terrain of subjunctives, more than sporting the best Spanish accent, more than memorizing the pasts of Spain and South America. This class taught me that to truly understand the language, one must understand its people. Continue reading →

Finding an internship

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For the second part of my Integrative experience, I’ve decided to try to find a law internship. Is this my final decision? No, I still have time to change my mind or take a service learning class for example. Unfortunately, I am unable to go abroad due to various reasons, like parental opinion, and lack of time to do honors requirements due to being a transfer student. This does not mean I want to work in a law firm, but work in an environment that is related to the fields I have interest in, such as immigration or family law. I want to gain exposure and knowledge before applying to law school. I hope to meet new people and form new connections. For this blog post, I’d like to talk about my process so far of finding the right internship for me. Continue reading →

Language-Learning without leaving the US

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I transferred to UMASS in Fall 2017 from a community college. Coming in as a Junior, it has been stressful trying to make the most out of my UMASS experience and making use of everything the university has to offer. I spent most of my first semester feeling overwhelmed with prospects of studying abroad, service-learning and internships. Even deciding to have Spanish be my only major was a drawn-out internal struggle. At the beginning of the semester I questioned how much I was getting out of being a Spanish major. It seemed to me that most courses focused more on the culture of Spain, and I have more interest in learning about Latin American Culture. I’m from the Pioneer Valley originally so a lot of my interest in Spanish came from my connections with the Latinx population in the area, much of which is Puerto Rican. I want to do Social Work after I graduate so I spent a lot of time exploring the BDIC program (Bachelors Degree with Individual Concentration) with the hopes that I could take classes in departments that would benefit my career goals. I met with multiple advisors, making sure to advocate for myself and make connections with faculty – which is something I believe is extremely important for all students to do. I had even applied and been accepted to the BDIC program and planned to incorporate Spanish and Latino Studies classes with Psychology and Sociology classes.

When the time came to register for Spring classes, I found myself still drawn to many Spanish classes.

Continue reading →

Other Ways to Volunteer Using Spanish and the Opportunities for Being a Spanish Major

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You do not necessarily have to go abroad to practice speaking Spanish. Although, going abroad will help in many ways to practice speaking Spanish. Many can practice Spanish through the use of doing community service volunteering. I was doing some research on that, and I found an organization where there is an opportunity to volunteer in addition to practice speaking Spanish as well as teaching Spanish to others. This organization is called the Spanish American Center in Leominster, MA where there is alot of community service volunteering that happens every year with this organization. Continue reading →