Connecting Digitally To Our Town

Celebrating Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month

This project is a part of the Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month celebration because it supports a Latino teacher or a school where the majority of students are Latino.

I have been a high school and middle school English teacher for nineteen years. Currently, I teach at Altimira Middle School, a school with a diverse population. Last year, for the first time, I also taught three sections of Computers. I believe that there must be a sense of purpose beyond the immediate "coolness" of incorporating technology into the curriculum. In the fall, I paired my students up with senior citizens from a local activity center. My students interviewed them through a questionnaire the seniors filled out and then sent to our school. My students then paired up, were assigned to one senior citizen, and brought his or her story to life using Power Point and images collected from the Internet - ones that would help to illustrate the experience. When the project was complete, the students and the elders met one another. We had a little party, presented each honored elder with a rose, and showed each group's Power Point while the students sat next to their elder partner - enjoying punch and cookies. Later, the students presented a copy of the disk to their partner. It was a marvelous experience to observe a connection made between people who would most likely not have otherwise met, fostering respect and understanding across the generations. Comments from my students after the experience were positive, most of them citing that they had no idea that WWII had such an enormous impact on people living in the U.S., and that school was REALLY DIFFERENT back then. This year, I would like to make another community connection. Recently, a children's home opened up in our valley. It is for children whose parents are not present in their lives for a variety of reasons: drugs, prison, mental illness, death, etc. I have already spoken with one of the board members, and she is very interested in my students' project. I plan to have my students write and illustrate children's stories using either Power Point or Movie Maker. It will take lots of planning and creativity. My students will dedicate their stories to the child to whom they have been assigned. Once the stories are complete and burned onto disks, we will have a gathering - either at the Children's Home or at our school. It will be the same idea as our earlier project. The kids will sit with their middle school author and enjoy each little story written especially for him or her. And, of course, each child will have his or her own disk to keep. I believe this project will foster connections between my students and the much smaller children from the children's home. My students will realize how rich they are in family, and that there are many young people - right here in Sonoma Valley -who have endured very difficult experiences. The kids from the Children's Home will witness what fun and creative products these older kids are producing in school - something to which they can look forward. As a teacher, I want to show kids ways to help and connect with their community. Technology is the powerful vehicle I will employ in order to achieve this goal. In order to efficiently and effectively complete this project, I would like the students to have access to digital photos/ videos that they create to enhance their endeavors. There is a wonderful and relatively inexpensive still/ video camera that would work well. Finally, this project is not a one-time-only endeavor. I will continue to create links between my students and their community, their world, empowering them to think globally - helping them to see a world beyond the school grounds. At least 100, and perhaps more, students will move through this project each school year.