My Christian Teaching Perspective

In addition to meeting World Language State Academic Standards, the Las

Fallas unit prompts students to consider questions of faith, hospitality and
community. My Christian perspective is woven through this units design prompting
students to consider how they embrace individuals who may live across the street or
across the Atlantic Ocean.
The main objectives of this unit are for students to master the Spanish past
tense through recounting the main aspects of the Las Fallas festival, comparing their
own cultures festivals to those of Las Fallas, and analyzing the roles of hospitality,
community, and the other in these traditions. The questions in this unit help
students to consider their own worldviews by evaluating what makes an experience
or tradition important to them. Students have the choice to recount experiences that
are important to them whether it is with a festival, holiday, family tradition, or step in
their journey of faith. For example, is it the gifts, the people, the religious aspect or
something else that makes them value these experiences? How do their values
relate to the values of the individuals in the Las Fallas clips and stories? In order to
make activities authentic, relevant and meaningful, students will be able to share
their writing with Morgan, a native Spanish-speaker from Valencia. My Christian
perspective is evident also in the lesson design, which takes into account each 8th
grade students varied learning, social, and developmental needs.
I seek to become a teacher who is not only aware of these varied needs in
my students lives, but one who actively works toward providing a more socially just

education for every student. My desire to become a teacher was shaped by my

experiences as a student. The teachers that I learned from provided meaningful
curriculum and a supportive learning environment. Their care for my success as a
student as well as for my thriving as a human being and child of God, were evident in
their actions toward me. The teachers who stand out in my student career are the
ones who were willing to listen to not only my literary analyses, but also to my
adolescent laments. As my teachers did, I seek to view each student as an individual
who bears the image of God. I believe that every student deserves to flourish.
Whether the school is private or public, urban or suburban, I seek to create
meaningful curriculum that encourages students to become agents of change. Within
the world language classroom, I encourage students to ask questions such as who is
the other? Who am I? How do we treat the other with hospitality? Through these
questions and through giving my students authentic assignments that focus on the
relevance of the Spanish language, I hope to create an environment where students
embrace both language and others with open arms.
Activities throughout the Las Fallas unit encourage students to foster
hospitality. From Smith and Carvill's analysis of hospitality in the language
classroom, we understand that there is a gift and benefit to being the stranger as
well as in welcoming in the stranger. In this unit, students have the opportunity to
embrace the stranger but also to be changed by learning about Morgan. While
students are encouraged to embrace the stranger in the lessons toward the
beginning of the unit, by the end of the unit students have the opportunity to be
embraced by Morgan, who was once a stranger to them. Language and culture

connect the students to Morgan encouraging them to develop a relationship with

each other.
As seen in the day two activities and our final activity, the Las Fallas unit
offers students the scaffolding and Universal Design curriculum structure to further
middle school level Spanish listening, reading, writing and speaking skills. Las Fallas
provides teachers with a means of connecting students to and potentially fostering
relationships with Spanish-speaking individuals both in the U.S. and abroad.