Progress+Reports

Progress report draft April 2011 to 2014

** Professional Growth Group Progress Reports **

Documenting diversity in Chicago Hispanic communities for Spanish classes
 * Group Name: Title of Project: **


 * Group Members: **Suzanne Baum, Katie Hundley and Becky López.


 * Administrator: **Amani Reed


 * Check in Date: **

Students of Spanish don’t always get the best exposure to the cultural diversity of Chicago Hispanic communities through mass-produced textbooks. In order to fill this gap, our group will research and design a bank of pedagogic materials featuring Chicago Hispanic neighborhoods, art, foods and cultures for use in multi-level Spanish classes. Our group will visit local Hispanic neighborhoods to take photos, make videos, document special foods and restaurants and collect realia. We will create a comprehensive repository of engaging exercises with photo banks, Promethean flipcharts, videos and interactive activities using objects collected in different settings. A significant goal of this project is to cultivate students’ awareness of different identities, social classes, cultural practices and gastronomical traditions among local Spanish-speaking Chicagoans.
 * Goal for 2011-2012: **


 * Current Focus or Progress: **
 * To date, we have created a Wiki for our group where we have outlined ideas and a preliminary timeline for our group project. The Wiki is a central repository that can facilitate group communication without having to exclusively rely on e-mail. **


 * Activity Planned for Professional Growth Day April 20, 2012: **
 * Our focus for Professional Development Day 2011 is to identify specific curricular areas where new materials would enhance the study of grammar in conjunction with cultural diversity among Hispanic communities in Chicago in the Spanish program. We will elaborate a plan for going out in the field in Chicago so that we know what we are looking for, what media we will be using, what specific things we will aim to collect. We set a tentative July date for collecting materials. **


 * Projection for 2012-2013: **
 * During the summer of 2011 we will follow up on our plans from Professional Development Day. This entails going into the city to photograph, video and collect realia in order to put together materials for the curricular units we have identified. **


 * During the 2012-2013 school year our plan will be to begin the process of putting together our materials and creating a repository for them. During the summer of 2013, we plan on creating flip charts with all our photo and information that we have gathered for the Promethean Boards. **


 * Nov. 2, 2012: **
 * Today Becky and Katie met to share photographs taken from the Pilsen and La Villita neighborhoods during the afternoon session for Professional Development Day. They archived, analyzed and edited photos. Additionally, they burned CD's of the pictures for all group members. Suzanne created a folder on the file server with additional photos for the group to use. During our next collaborative phase we will develop pedagogical materials using the photos. **


 * April 19, 2013: **
 * For this Professional Development Day, Katie went downtown to take photos of the Picasso horse sculpture in the Daley Plaza, promotional advertisements for the Art Institute's Picasso in Chicago exhibit, and the Crown Fountain by Jaume Plensa. The images will be incorporated into the photo archives for this project to document how Spanish and Catalan artists have made an impact on the Chicago urban landscape. **


 * April 28, 2013 **
 * Suzanne used a personal day (a Sunday) as she was Chair and used Professional Development Day (April 19) for many meetings regarding the schedule for 2013-14 for the department. On April 28, 2013, she went to the special exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago called "Picasso in Chicago". She took photos of different forms of art; ceramics, drawings, etchings and paintings. She began compiling the photos in a power point for a "retrospective on Picasso" for middle and high school Spanish classes. She will also give a brief history of the works of Picasso on said power point. She plans on going on a walking tour of the murals of Pilsen on May 12, 2013. **

http://zonadearte.wordpress.com/ and http://chicagomurals.wikispaces.com/Pilsen+Murals
 * May 16, 2013 **
 * Suzanne took a walking tour of the murals of Pilsen and the National Museum of Mexican Art with Joyce, a tour guide and former CPS teacher and a small group on Sunday, May 12. Most of the murals seen were painted by children and youth from the neighborhood who participate in community art centers and community service projects. The Resurrection Project was the one community service organizations which sponsored most murals. They all have common themes depicted: For example, hands, corn, barbed wire, butterflies, famous people in Mexican history, famous mythological persons - Quetzalcoatl - people today in the community and people from the past of Mexico - the indigenous peoples. We also visited two Catholic churches - St. Adalbert and St. Pius. We also walked down 18th Street, entered Panadería Nuevo Leon, saw the Tortillería across the street and many art galleries. Suzanne photographed many murals and Joyce promised to provide me a link to a website with better photographs (without cars) of all the murals of Pilsen. The painting or mural most related to our project in the National Museum of Mexican Art is "The Ancient Memories of Mayahuel's Peoples Still Breath" painted in 1996 by Mario Castillo, who was one of the first artists to allow youth to paint with him. This impressive mural is at the beginning of the permanent collection of the museum. There are 8 hidden calaveras in this masterpiece. The building with the most retratos, each one of a famous Latino figure in modern and past history, is on the Cooper Dual Language Academy, a Bilingual Chicago Public Elementary **** School in Pilsen. **
 * Here are a couple of links with some photos of the murals of Pilsen: **

April 11, 2014

Just checking in and updating our progress report. We would now like to add a new community service component to our Spanish curriculum in Spanish-speaking Chicago neighborhoods, thanks to Hannah Evans, the new Community Service and Learning Coordinator in both the Middle and the High School. Suzanne will pilot volunteer work during one high school period + the 75 minute modified block period and take students to Casa Central on May 13th, 2014 to read aloud in Spanish to the elderly and play bingo, dominoes and do arts and crafts with them. Dinah D'Antoni has already visited Casa Central and provided me with photos of the center, which I have stored on the server in the Project folder / World Languages / Becky, Katie, Suzanne. With another high school class we will go to Erie Neighborhood House on May 15th, 2014 and read aloud to and play with small children in English and Spanish. This is a read it and leave it program, so our students will also donate a book in Spanish to the Casa. We will also prepare this in class ahead of time by practicing reading aloud in Spanish and learning the social and cultural values of games such as bingo and dominoes in parts of the Spanish-speaking world. We will also play those games and learn the rules ahead of time. We are very excited to have this opportunity and to give back to the community. Our students have also expressed enthusiasm.

Here are the links to the sites:

Casa Central in Humboldt Park : http://www.casacentral.org/

Erie House in West Town: http://www.eriehouse.org/