Student Feature Friday - Latin American Experience Project

Alexa Mirageas, Pat DeVries of Chevre, Joria Todd, Arianna Aniello

One of this year's most exciting additions to Nipmuc's program of studies is the Latin American Experience. This senior course exposes students to the cultural, social, and political aspects of the Spanish speaking world. One of the key units of the class asks students to build connections with community members who have cultural roots in Latin America. Using their knowledge of Spanish, students are asked to develop relationships with local business owners and professionals in order to develop a more personal and meaningful understanding of Latin American culture.

Students are excited about the course because it gives them a practical way to apply their learning. In speaking about the class with World Language Chairperson, Mrs Tricia Moloney, she mentioned that the class is a great fit for seniors because it "gets them out into the community to interact with real people in real situations. The class helps to get students out of their comfort zone in order to interact with community members as they will in their life beyond high school."

After visiting the class, I knew I wanted to feature the impressive projects being completed in the course.  This week I am excited to share the work of Alexa Mirages, Joria Todd, and Arianna Aniello. Through their project these students connected with Patricia DeVries, owner of Chevere, a jewelry store and gift shop in Uxbridge.  Ms. DeVries met with the students to share the story of her journey to America from Latin America and the challenges she overcame to become a small business owner. Included below you will find our students' thoughts about what they took away from this awesome experience.

Arianna Aniello
Q. Tell me about the Latin American Experience course and what you enjoy most about the class?
A. I decided to take the Latin American Experience class for a different type of Spanish class rather than grammar and spelling. This class was a lot different than what I expected and is for sure an experience in itself. The class focuses mainly on Latin America - learning new things about the culture along with finding people in the real world and talking to them about their experiences. This class is a new style of learning to learn and explore outside of the classroom. A project-based class, that teaches you a lot of skills you'll need to know for the future, including how to be self-reliant and mange your time wisely. I most enjoy being able to find people around me who have Latin backgrounds and learning about their experiences there and coming to America. It's a great thing when school and fun combine, being able to talk to real people one-on-one while learning at the same time. I especially love working with my friends on these projects getting to experience the same things with them as well. I do think this class is a good start for allowing students to have trust with their teachers and learn outside of the classroom. I am very happy to have taken the Latin America Experience class this year and I encourage students to take it in the future.

Q. What are some of the skills you used in order to complete this project?
A. Throughout this project I have learned a lot of new learning skills. This project was mostly something we had to complete ourselves with some guidance from Mrs. Moloney. We had a due date and we had a list of things we needed to get done by that time on our own. We had to find a business owner, set up multiple times to meet and discuss with her, complete a trifold poster on the business, and set up a filmed interview. This project taught me how to be more self reliant which is a skill I used. You need to be able to handle things in and outside of the classroom on your own without a teacher telling you when do to them. Also time management skills, being able to find time to get everything done. A new style of learning and having trust with your teacher to be able to leave the classroom to get work done. I feel like this class will help us in the future for college when we have to do everything on our own, this is a good starting point for that.

Alexa Mirageas
Q. What was the most interesting/rewarding part of your project?
A. The most interesting part of my project was getting a personal perspective from someone whose story we were researching. I was able to see a different point of view and learn about an unique experience in a different way. The most rewarding part of the project was being able to use my Spanish education in a useful way. I contributed by translating and interviewing in Spanish. It was rewarding to know how beneficial my education in Spanish had become.

Q. Tell me about the Latin American Experience course and what you enjoy most about the class?
A.The Latin American Experience course is a course that gives you a different classroom experience. Students were able to leave class and given the responsibility to complete their class work and term project on their own schedule. I enjoyed the freedom and different experiences this course offered.

Joria Todd
Q. What was the most interesting/rewarding part of your project?
A. The most rewarding part of this project was seeing how happy Pat was to talk about Chevere and to hear her story of coming to America. It was so eye opening listening to a first-hand account of someone telling their own story instead of reading it or hearing it from someone else. It also felt so good to know that we could complete a project this extensive and do a good job on it as high school student.

Q. Tell me about the Latin American Experience course and what you enjoy most about the class?
A. I love the freedom Mrs. Moloney gives us. She really trusted us enough to go off during class time to interview Pat and buy poster supplies. It was nice that a teacher recognized that we can handle a challenge and use our time wisely and effectively even if we're not under their watchful eye.

Mrs. Moloney also has so many group and hands-on activities that keeps all types of learners involved and engaged. I'm never bored in her class and I actually learn well from her teaching style. The Latin American Experience class is structured so as to give us a lot of freedom and really let us learn how to be time efficient. It is also nice to learn more about the Latin culture because I haven't been exposed to it before.

Q. What are some of the skills you used in order to complete this project?
A. The skills we used every class were time management, creativity, effective collaboration, technology skills (updating our blog from our iPads, creating our movie, editing our interview), and soft skills, like good interview practices and how to act in a professional setting.

Overall, this project was so educational and was one of the highlights of my year and one of the most effective and worthwhile projects I have done at Nipmuc. Pat was awesome to work with and Mrs. Moloney's project taught the three of us so much about ourselves, group projects, and the Latin American culture.

Thank you Arianna, Alexa, Joria, and Mrs. Moloney! You can access the students' blog which captures some of their work in the project here.