Citizenship and Cultural Identity

Go, Sebastien, Go

This lesson is developed around the short video “Go, Sebastien, Go” and has at its core the goal of helping students reflect about their cultural identity while at the same time considering the diverse cultures of the U.S. and how we define citizenship. The video also contains many other relevant topics that we touch on as time allows, including racism and cyberbullying. Students in this example are novice low, but the lesson would be appropriate for any level of Spanish. Since the video is in English, the lesson can be used in a variety of courses, especially if the focus is on U.S. diversity, identity and citizenship.

This lesson comes at the end of a unit I teach in which the cultural focus is Hispanics in the United States. Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) and Intercultural Citizenship are goals of this course, so the lesson is intentionally designed to help students reflect on their own culture as they challenge pre-conceived ideas (especially about Hispanics in the U.S.) and develop skills, knowledge and attitudes about the new content. 

Essential Question: 

What does it mean to be a citizen of the United States? 

The lesson is divided here into four parts. Typically parts 1 and 2 are completed in one day, part 3 continues the next day, and part 4 is expansion over any number of days, weeks or months! I have had students do some parts of the lessons on EdPuzzle as well.

Part 1: Brainstorming and reflection

To introduce the lesson, students reflect on their identity and consider specifically what makes them United States citizens and/or what the requirements are for being a citizen (or a resident; this is an area where it is important to keep students’ identities in mind, as not all students may be citizens or even legal residents of the U.S.; if in doubt, adapt). Students use vocabulary that is pre-taught and generate ideas together in Spanish. We save the list of ideas to use later.

Part 2: Challenging pre-conceived ideas

Part of developing ICC is to help students challenge pre-conceived ideas they may have about the topic. Doing this early in the lesson helps them suspend judgment moving forward… if their pre-conceived ideas were proven wrong early on, they will be more likely to be open-minded about the material yet to come.

In this lesson, students are shown a series of images (on Google slides) and they are asked where the images are from. Students inevitably say Mexico, as many of the slides represent elements of typical Mexican culture, architecture, customs and food. However, the images are all from San Antonio, Texas. One slide is of the Alamo, so some students may pick up on the fact that the images are from the U.S., but that is good as it will lead to the next point, which is that the Hispanic culture that is prevalent in the U.S., particularly in the south, is not just due to immigration, but rather in large part to our history: the south was in fact Mexico until the Mexican-American war and the signing of the Tratado of Guadalupe-Hidalgo in 1848. Students are given a short presentation that highlights maps of the U.S. and Mexico before and after the war, and as the border was being determined.

The presentation concludes with an image of Sebastien de la Cruz, a young mariachi singer from San Antonio Texas. Students describe the picture and speculate about where Sebastien is from. When students were asked this question in the past, over half the class guessed the United States, likely influenced by the previous question about the images of San Antonio, when all but one student guessed they were Mexico. Already, students’ minds have opened to where Mexican culture can be manifested.

For homework, students are asked to reflect on their own cultural identity with the prompts shown on the right. To develop ICC students need to consider their own culture as well as the target culture, so this reflection helps students recognize their cultural identity and prepares them for the video about Sebastien.

Students in the novice class should reflect in English, as the point of this reflection is to develop their ICC, and they will be able to express their ideas better in English. Students are also assigned a short, informative video on the Mexican-American war to complement what was explained in class in the target language.

Part 3: Go, Sebastien, Go

Students are now ready to watch the short documentary, Go, Sebastien, Go. If time allows, more could be done to introduce the tradition of singing the national anthem before sporting events (a custom not practiced in all countries) or political controversy and sports (such as kneeling during the national anthem). This video is rich in possibilities! Students could also watch the video as homework, as it is short, easy to watch, and in English.

After watching the video, students reflect on what they saw, and in groups they describe their reaction to the video freely and then with specific questions about the discrimination Sebastien faced and the reaction of the Spurs, Sebastien’s family and Sebastien himself. At the novice level, I allow them to speak in English, but we generate some vocabulary in Spanish to express their ideas with familiar words as well as a few new ones. We go back to the list we generated in part 1 of this lesson and note how Sebastien fulfills the requirements for being a citizen. We discuss how Sebastien is targeted because of racist, nativist feelings that are prevalent among many U.S. citizens. There is no racial requirement for being a citizen (though in the past, there was). Students are encouraged to express their ideas in Spanish, but they are not stopped for using English.

Students then go to a Jamboard with some of the racist tweets that came from Sebastien’s singing, and they tweet responses to correct the initial post. Their tweets need to be factual and not engage in the same discriminatory and disrespectful language of the original posts. They also need to be written in Spanish.

Tenemos la oportunidad de responder a los Tweets sobre Sebastien. ¿Qué podemos decir a las personas que escribieron los Tweets? En grupos de dos, respondan a cada Tweet (copiados en este Google Doc) con argumentos basados en hechos. Recuerden que solo pueden usar 280 caracteres, como en Twitter.

For homework, students write another journal reflection about the film and our class discussion, in English.

            

 

Part 4: Expansion and Intercultural Citizenship

This video offers a lot of room for expansion. Since we live in MN, my students may feel this isn’t part of “their” United States as we don’t have a large Hispanic population in Northwestern MN. To help students appreciate our local diversity, for homework in the days following this lesson they also read stories posted on the Minnesota Historical Society’s webpage of immigrants from Latin America, a few of which come from Moorhead residents. These are in English, but students then write short “getting to know you” blurbs in Spanish with the person’s basic information included, and they reflect on their stories in homework, in English.

Much more can also be done with the racism and discrimination that this video also demonstrates so clearly, and the cyberbullying that Sebastien faces. We refer back to this video throughout the semester, and an end-of-semester project is to have students plan a short lesson about this video to take to the local Spanish-immersion elementary school or middle school. Young teenagers can relate to Sebastien, and the lesson on cyberbullying is valuable at this age.