My name is Brenda Sólkez, and I am from Durango, México. I am a full-time doctoral student in the Department of Hispanic Languages and Literatures, and I will be entering my fourth year in the Fall of 2020. Currently, I am in the process of writing my dissertation prospectus. My dissertation research engages with questions of migration, the border, and citizenship through critical readings of contemporary cultural production in the Greater Mexico (that encompass areas and peoples outside the territorial borders of the Mexican nation-state). In my research, I employ an interdisciplinary and multi-media approach to examine literature, film, television, music, and digital media across national and regional boundaries.
As part of my research project, I have conducted ethnographic work with migrants in Mexico by documenting their border-crossing journeys, their arrival in the United States, their everyday survival in the new country, and the negotiation of their new lives. As a Mexican immigrant and the first in my family to pursue a doctoral degree, I have learned first-hand about the obstacles that immigrants and underrepresented communities of color confront and the impact this has on having access to higher education. Therefore, for the Mellon-funded Humanities Engage Fellowship for Summer 2020, I pitched my own project: to work at Casa San José, a non-profit organization based in Pittsburgh that supports and advocates for the integration and self-sufficiency of Latinx and Hispanic communities. As expressed in the organization’s mission statement, the goal of Casa San José “is to promote a culture of acceptance where Latinx immigrants are treated with dignity, respect, and kindness.”
Every summer, Casa San José hosts Campamento Sonrisa, a summer camp for children of immigrants aged 6 to 13. Campamento Sonrisa is primarily designed to help Latinx and Hispanic children learn about their cultural heritage in a more comprehensive manner and strengthen their bilingual fluency. For this project, I have harnessed my fourteen years of Spanish teaching experience to design a curriculum that helps develop the Spanish language skills of the children. As heritage speakers of Spanish, Casa San José summer camp participants do not have the same needs as students of Spanish as a second language. The language learning needs of heritage speakers differ from those of second language learners with whom most language instructors are accustomed. Therefore, I proposed to teach the San José summer camp language component following the methodology of Teaching Spanish to Heritage Speakers and not Second Language Acquisition.
Having been involved in community organizing and activism before my doctorate program, I was already very familiar with the mission of Casa San José. I am a firm believer that it is imperative when working with community organizations first to listen and learn from the community itself, even if we as academics are part of it. Informed by this body of work, before I began writing this proposal, I first contacted the Executive Director of Casa San José, Mónica Ruiz, to discuss the opportunity for the Humanities Engage Fellowship. During our conversation, the summer camp was mentioned, as well as the need for a Spanish language instructor. I expressed that since the children at the summer camp are not second language learners of Spanish, the Second Language Acquisition methodology would probably not be the best approach for developing their language competency. Although Teaching Spanish to Heritage Speakers methodology has been widely implemented with college students, I proposed to attempt it at Casa San José’s summer camp. Therefore, I shared with her that I could bring my knowledge of the Heritage Speakers method and apply it to the children’s Spanish classes. This is how this summer project arose. So far, it has been one of my most gratifying experiences as a pedagogue. I am immensely grateful to Mónica Ruiz for supporting this project, my host organization, Casa San José, the children I teach and from whom I learn every day, the Mellon-funded Humanities Engage Fellowship for Summer 2020, and everyone involved in this process. It has given me the opportunity to share with my own community what I have learned throughout all my years of teaching Spanish and to share access to education.
For my reflections post-immersive, please see The Language of Bonding: Teaching and Learning from Latinx Youth.
Learn about all the Summer 2020 Immersive Fellows and their experiences with their host organizations.