A Social Justice Approach to Teaching With Comprehensible Input in Middle School Spanish

• In Event: Roundtable Session 19
  In Roundtable Session: Teacher Research: A Social Justice Approach to Teaching and Learning

Abstract

The literature contains several recommendations for bringing social justice teaching to K-12 world/foreign language education in the U.S., but only one study observes it in practice. To remedy this, I conducted a practitioner inquiry project in my middle school Spanish II classroom that applies teaching-with-comprehensible-input techniques to social justice content. I focus on the question of how I responded to the teaching process. I employ a cultural politics lens and Foucault’s concept of ethical care of the self. A narrative analysis of fieldnotes, researcher reflections and critical friend dialogues has yielded preliminary results that focus on difficult lessons learned about how aspects of the curriculum were structured in ways that may have benefited the teacher more than the students.

Author

• Garrett Delavan, Salt Lake City School District