Today Was a Good Day.

Believe me, if you had been inside my head this morning when I woke up, you would have been as surprised as I am about how this day turned out. :)

I was beyond exhausted when I woke up. I stayed up too late last night (and we're talking the wee hours of 10:00pm here), finishing up school work and refining the next day's lesson plan. Pretty much the only thing that kept me from calling in sick was knowing that I was responsible for today's Spanish classes because I was beginning a unit and delaying it would throw EVERYTHING off. So I hauled myself out of bed and made it work.

Upon arriving to school, I was reasonably nervous about teaching my unit. It's about why we learn other languages and focuses on the culture and life of Cuba. Basically, it's about 100% different from the curriculum that GMS uses (TPRS, for you educators out there) and I didn't know what to expect or how the kids would receive it. Instead of just listening to a story and mastering vocabulary words and structures, I was asking them to analyze events and motives and articulate how they felt about them.

To my surprise, it went over so much better than I thought it would! The meat of my lesson focused on making comparisons between life in the U.S. and life in Cuba. For example, did you know that the average Cuban worker makes only $0.33 a day? I passed out bags containing 33 cents so that the kids could see this figure and hold the coins through the bags to connect to their learning. After the comparisons, I told a shortened version of the Elian Gonzalez story and showed a newscast from the morning that the INS personnel forcibly removed Elian from his uncle's home in Miami.

The students were surprised and made uncomfortable by the video clips and stories I was telling them, as I had hoped they would be. We had a mini-discussion on who was at fault, who was acting illegally, etc. Back in 2000 when this whole fiasco was going on, the central issue was the custody battle between the uncle and Elian's dad back in Cuba. However, the media latched on to the supposed "illegal immigrant" issue and blew that up even bigger than the custody battle.

But did you know that Elian was in fact living in the U.S. legally? Back in 1966, lawmakers passed the Cuban Adjustment Act, which says that any Cuban person fleeing the country as a refugee was admitted entrance to the U.S. without prejudice because of the dangerous living conditions and totalitarian communist government. That person can stay in the U.S. for up to a year, provided that they pursue naturalization and citizenship. In 1995, the Clinton administration made some revisions to this Act, which stipulated that any immigrant that was intercepted in the water between the coasts of Cuba and the U.S. would be sent back to Cuba. But, should that immigrant walk ashore in Florida, he or she is granted that protection afforded by the Cuban Adjustment Act. If you don't believe me, check out this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_feet,_dry_feet_policy

Elian washed up on the shore on Thanksgiving Day. So technically, he legally attained the right to stay here as a Cuban refugee because he wasn't intercepted in the water. "Pisar la Tierra" (which means 'to step on or tread the land') is and has been an important ideal for Cubans since the exodus began in the 50s and 60s. It not only holds emotional importance as recognition of a dangerous journey completed safely, but it also holds legal importance in that they can stay here without fear of being deported.

It was really great to share this kind of story with my kids today because they don't often get the chance to really think about and chew on issues. They're spoon-fed the Spanish language, but they don't get to interact much with the culture. I had one student tell me that he enjoyed today's class simply because he felt comfortable raising his hand to volunteer an answer because he knew it was a correct answer. This student in particular has been really struggling in Spanish so far (Ds and some Fs) because he has trouble keeping up with the fast pace of the class and how the material is taught. I could see from today that his grades are not for lack of trying. He was really interested in these issues and he articulated himself well when I asked the class for their thoughts. I was really happy to see that this lesson achieved the goal of showing the lower-achieving students that they can still succeed in Spanish class.

Unfortunately, I can't do an entire curriculum of culture and discussions and deep thinking. But I am thankful for the days that I do get for doing this kind of thing because it gives the opportunity for different students to shine instead of the same old fast thinkers all the time. :)