Teaching with Radio Ambulante

Introduce yourself and where you teach: My name is Katherine R. Matheson. I teach Spanish at Phillips Academy in Andover, MA, an independent boarding school for students in grades 9-12.  Describe the levels you teach and with one you use RA I have taught all levels of Spanish throughout my career, but for the past few years at PA, I have been teaching Spanish 300, an intermediate-level course mainly for tenth and eleventh graders. Their backgrounds as learners of Spanish vary widely: some have been learning since elementary school, some began in middle school, some started as beginners when they arrived at PA and a few others are heritage speakers. Some are international students. We don’t use a textbook at any level of Spanish in my school, so students who have come through our program are used to seeing authentic media in the coursework, but those who matriculate from more traditional programs usually need a bit of time to adjust.  The episode you used  The two episodes I’ve used with this level are “En busca de las palabras” and part of “Fealdad.” Both are part of an extended unit on gender identity.   How you used it I use the first five minutes or so of “Fealdad” to familiarize students with beauty standards in Latin America and to reinforce the language function of describing people. Later in the unit, they listen to all of “En busca de las palabras” to understand some of the challenges that gender nonconforming people face, specifically in Spanish-speaking cultures. The episode also introduces them to key vocabulary in context; students are able to apply this vocabulary in discussions and compositions after listening to the episode. I use Micah’s story in conjunction with a TED Talk video by Dr. Lera Boroditsky called “How language shapes the way we think.”   What the reaction of the students was My students are pretty savvy when it comes to issues related to identity, but many of them arrive in my class lacking an understanding of how perspectives on identity can vary across and within nations. When Gabriela discusses how her physical appearance is “read” by others, both as an adult and as a child, it makes racism and sexism personal and immediate. Likewise, Micah’s struggles with seemingly simple aspects of language as well as complex high-level bureaucracy show how his transgender identity has permeated all aspects of his life. My students have strong emotional reactions to both of these stories. These are topics that many prefer to intellectualize in the classroom, but hearing true stories from real people allow my students to connect to the human beings whose lives are impacted by these issues. Even more importantly, it provides an opportunity for my students who identify as BIPOC or gender nonconforming to hear from people like them, to feel represented and heard, and to experience the centering of voices like theirs in our class. I would say that the challenge inherent for an intermediate-level student in listening to stories narrated by native speakers, for native speakers, does not overshadow the urgency of the issues at the heart of both episodes. In fact, my students are always eager for this challenge. They love consuming media meant for native speakers, and with the right scaffolding, they can take away very profound understandings.   What you learned and how you would do it differently/ better the next time It can be overwhelming for students to handle an entire episode of RA, especially at the intermediate level. I think chunking or excerpting an episode is an excellent approach for using RA with students who aren’t at the advanced level yet. I also encourage my students to use the transcriptions to assist their literal comprehension of the spoken language. Because “Fealdad” is the first podcast I use in this class, I scaffold the comprehension tasks heavily with images and discrete comprehension checks. There are significant parts of it that are not appropriate for high-school age students, but the first five minutes work very well as a stand-alone episode, and that’s something I’d like to do with other episodes, too. “En busca de las palabras” is much longer (17 minutes) and it really has to be broken down. I’ve done that in a few different ways: assigning chunks of the episode over the course of a week, for example, with comprehension questions for students to answer before engaging in a discussion in class about a particular segment. More recently, I’ve assigned the whole podcast episode days in advance of the in-class discussion, but chunking the accompanying worksheet so that students know that they are supposed to stop and take a break. I’ve also been moving away from comprehension questions and towards more open-ended prompts, asking students to explain why key vocabulary is relevant to the segment that they have listened to. Finally, I focus on ACTFL standards for interpretive proficiency, asking students to identify the main idea and key details, draw conclusions and make inferences on the worksheet, in hopes that they will be prepared to dive right into deep discussions in class, following whatever discussion protocol works for the group. I want to note that in the past I have used the Venezuelan film “Pelo malo” in this unit as a counterpoint to “En busca de las palabras,” but I’d like to use more current and empowering material when I teach this unit again in the spring. I think I can develop the learning tasks much more for the podcast episode, so I will likely just drop the movie and let Micah’s story take center stage.

Tell us about yourself:   My name is Gretchan Frederick and I am an Upper School Spanish teacher at Charlotte Latin  School, an independent TK-12 school in Charlotte, NC. I teach AP Spanish Language and Culture,  AP Spanish Literature and Culture, and Spanish IV Honors, which is the course we offer to our  intermediate high, pre-AP students. I have used Radio Ambulante with my students in each of  these courses, but the way I choose to use the episodes differs with each level.   How have you used Radio Ambulante in your classes? I have primarily employed Radio Ambulante in my Spanish IV Honors and AP Spanish classes. All  of our classes are thematically organized and we do not use a traditional textbook in most  levels, so Radio Ambulante is a great way to incorporate stories and lessons with “real world”  connections. By listening to different episodes through the year, we can have discussions in  class based on a specific episode without leaving our themes behind. The AP themes - Global  Challenges, Personal and Public Identities, Contemporary Life, Science and Technology, Beauty  and Aesthetics, and Family and Communities – are wide enough that a well-produced show like  Radio Ambulante is an invaluable resource that fits into almost any category and multiple  categories. I always tell my students that I want their experience in my classes to be  “interesting, relevant, and challenging,” and using Radio Ambulante is a way that helps me push  my students to learn more about the life outside of the “bubble” of our classroom and our  school community.  In Spanish IV Honors, studying a typical Radio Ambulante episode can take one to two weeks of  class time, but it’s worth it! These episodes are some of the parts of class that my students  remember even after they have graduated because studying one of these episodes in class  allows them to make the connections beyond themselves, to hear directly from others about  their lives and the things that affect them. I always open the approach to the episode with a  general question or two that connects broadly to the theme we are studying as well as to the  topic of the podcast without getting into too many preliminary details. For example, I love using  “Postal de San Salvador” in my Spanish IV Honors class when we study immigration. Before we  even listen to a second of the episode, I have my students think-pair-share about an activity or  pastime that is particularly meaningful to them, why they enjoy it, and what it might feel like if  they could no longer engage in that activity. Central to the episode is the personal enjoyment  that Iris gets from dying her hair, but then there are the potential ramifications that may result  from her having her hair dyed a particularly distinct color. I also use “El estudiante rebelde”  with my Spanish IV Honors students and we open the discussion with what they think the title  might mean, if they’ve ever said something that they later regretted – or didn’t – and what they  would want to say at graduation, if they were allowed to give a speech (we do not have any  student speeches at graduation). The students in Spanish IV Honors are mostly juniors, but  there are always a handful of seniors so this particular opening discussion, and the whole  episode, really grabs their attention. When I use “Deuda” in class, we spend some time before  listening to the episode talking about how credit cards work. They have no idea. It’s a great life  lesson. Then what can talk about whatever a “bono” is!   Once we have had our opening discussion, or answered the questions for homework, I have  usually identified some key vocabulary (unfamiliar words or idiomatic expressions or turns of  phrase, if there are any) and they are responsible for those definitions, explanations, or synonyms when possible. After that preliminary work is done, we are able to get down to the  business of listening to the episode. I like to divide the episode up into manageable sections  with comprehension questions, with a quick internet-based investigation, or with a reflection  question to make sure that students are understanding the story and continuing to apply it to  our theme(s) and their own experiences. I like to mix up how we do the listening and which  tools I allow them to use. Sometimes we listen to a section together in class and then we  discuss what we understood and work through any theme-based questions I might have for  them. Other times they listen for homework and I might allow them to listen with the transcript  of the episode, but typically not the translation. In the case of “El estudiante rebelde” it is  helpful to listen to Benjamín and read the transcript in order to get used to his Chilean accent.  When we have finished listening to an episode, I always try to ask a summary reflection  question, or I ask a question about the presence of our themes of study within the episode:  “We have studied this episode as a part of theme X, but how are themes Y and Z present in this  episode as well? Give specific examples from the episode.”   In AP Spanish Language and Culture, I do things a bit differently because they are older, more  advanced students, and they have previous experience with Radio Ambulante from the year  before. With my AP students, I provide them with a curated list of episodes from across the  different seasons of Radio Ambulante that I think are most relevant to the AP themes and most  accessible to high school students, either by topic or level of language used in the episode. I  give them the list with episode descriptions and a key word or two to allow them to decide  which episode they would like to listen to over the course of a few days. We had a long  weekend in early October of this year with Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday off of school, so I  Assigned them a “your choice” assignment of one episode from the list on Friday before the  long weekend and had it due the Thursday we returned after the break. Students then did  some small group work, sharing what they listened to, why they chose it, what they learned,  what surprised them from the episode, etc. While I assigned this over a long weekend, it could  easily be a two or three-night assignment while you work on other things in class. After  listening, students can do all kinds of different things: journal-based reflection about the  episode, small group conversations, short presentations, research something mentioned in the  episode, research to see how the situation has developed since the episode aired… there are a  lot of possibilities. This time around, after my AP students had listened to the episode of their  choice, I asked them to identify what the episodes had in common in terms of the theme in  which we were currently working, Personal and Public Identities. It’s always much easier to  identify differences, but there’s more value, I think, in finding those common threads in two  stories that might seem to be entirely different from each other.   Can you tell us about your student reactions or any other recommendations? A key element to my use of Radio Ambulante in class is that I never take the transcript and use  it as a fill-in-the-blank exercise. There are other audios, news reports, etc. that can be used for  that type of work in class. The value in Radio Ambulante is following the arc of the story over  the course of 30-45 minutes, hypothesizing, researching, and making connections to our  themes and our lives. Hearing the voices of the people involved brings these episodes to life in  a way that reading an article on the same topic does not. I think my students understand that  and see the value in it as well. They react audibly to moments of suspense or surprise, or  there’s the inevitable, “Oh no…” that gets muttered in class when they start connecting the  dots of where the story is going to go. I have used “Deuda” several times in Spanish IV Honors  when we discuss Puerto Rico (the history of colonization, the debt crisis, Hurricane María, and  statehood vs. independence make up our Contemporary Life unit, which also overlaps with  Global Challenges), and hearing Edwin’s voice when he talks about the money he saved and his  VIP status with his bank makes the fall of his personal portfolio that much more meaningful,  more multidimensional. Edwin’s a real person! That’s his voice! My students also react very  realistically and understandably to the rate of speech and difficultly of someone’s accent. This is  only natural. It is also a good reminder for them as to the wide variety of accents of people who  speak English. Neither language nor its speakers is a monolith, and there are wonderful regional  differences and nuances that they can begin to absorb.   What would you do differently next time?   If I could change anything that I’ve done with Radio Ambulante, I would say I would always like  to include more episodes – I could base an entire course around what is available – or to ask  fewer comprehension questions. Depending on the episode, the students don’t need to  understand every minute detail in order to get a lot of meaning from the experience.  Additionally, especially in the current socio-political climate, I’d like to be bolder in my episode  selection and use some that may be more challenging to have the tough conversations,  especially about identity, in class. I think students, especially the ages I teach (high school  juniors and seniors), are looking for those outlets and spaces where they can work through  what they think and why. Reacting to a story can be a good place to start, and Radio Ambulante  is there with a lot of great jumping off points.   How I use “Deuda” in Spanish IV Honors:   Class time: 2-3 weeks with pre- and post-listening activities   Class meetings: 5 days/week, 45-minute class periods  Theme: Contemporary Life, Global Challenges   Day 1: What do we know about Puerto Rico?   Basic questions, true/false questions  Overview of history of colonization of PR  Explanation of its status as a “territorio libre asociado” – what does that mean?  Day 2: Pair-Share responses to thematic introductory questions on p.1-2  What is debt? How do credit cards work?   Day 3: Vocabulary   Day 4: Listening and comprehension questions (there are a lot of ways to do this)  Together as a class, small group work to answer questions  Or individually, questions answered individually or in small groups/pairs, etc.  Day 5: Investigation 1 – The New Deal, America’s spending on infrastructure   Investigation 2 – What is the 936?  Divide class into two groups, have them research and present to the other group  What do they know about the New Deal from History class, AP US History?  Make it interdisciplinary, bring in background knowledge from other subject(s)  Teacher can add in any missing information/correct misunderstood information  Day 6, 7, 8: Listening and comprehension questions, final hypotheses   What are bonds? How do they work?   As general or as specific as the teacher wants to get, depending on comfort level  Day 9: What has happened in Puerto Rico since this episode aired?   Hurricane María, video “Hurricane María devastates Humacao” Article, NY Times “Puerto Rico enfrenta enormes obstáculos para recuperarse” • How does the “deuda” and everything we just learned from the podcast make the  hurricane recovery more challenging?  Day 10: Puerto Rico’s recovery after María   West Side Story – plot summary   West Side Story “María” What’s the name of the hurricane?  Lin-Manuel Miranda “Almost Like Praying” What did LMM do musically?  What are the “lyrics” of the song?   What’s a rosary?   Why is this song titled “Almost Like Praying”?   Who are the people in the video?   This lesson makes a nice conclusion to the unit, and teachers can choose to stop here. I  continue into a related unit about whether or not Puerto Rico should pursue statehood or  independence, or maintain the status quo. I provide students with a variety of articles and  interviews with different points of view on the topic, including a recent interview with  Residente of Calle 13. Students will be familiar with Calle 13 as they have studied the song  “Latinoamérica” in a previous class. To conclude this unit, students have to write a persuasive  essay, supported with sources we have used in class, arguing either for statehood or  independence (this is preparation for the AP Exam persuasive essay free response task they will  do if they take the AP course the following year).   How I use “student choice” in AP Spanish Language and Culture  Class time: 3-4 homework assignments, 1-2 class period s  Class meetings: 5 days/week, 45-minute class periods  AP Theme: Potentially all of them!   Day 1: Provide students with the document “AP Radio Ambulante – escoger un podcast”  I have listened to all of the episodes on the list in order to gage appropriateness, etc.   Explain the assignment – not just the HOW, but also the WHY.   Answer any questions.   Homework (2-3 nights): Students listen, taking notes.  Who are the main characters involved?   What are the major plot points?   Note any new, relevant vocabulary, look up definitions   If needed, students can listen and read the transcript, but I encourage them NOT to  use the translation. I do acknowledge that it is available, but I return to the WHY of the  assignment with them.   Because this is a long-term homework assignment, we are working on other things  together in class.   Day 4: Small group or pair conversations in class about their episodes  Pair students who have listened to different episodes  Remind them that they are working in interpersonal mode, which requires them to ask  and answer questions with their partner, not just talk at that person.   This conversation is a “rough draft” of a written reflection they will do for homework  (or in class the next day), so they should use their time well knowing that they are  seeding ideas for a future assignment.   Give them some “muletas” to get the conversations started:   What episode did you listen to? What happened?   Was the episode what you thought it would be when you chose it?   What questions do you want to know more about now that you’ve listened to  the episode?   Ask 2-3 additional follow-up questions that show you were paying attention to  your partner!   How do the episodes relate to X theme? What about themes Y and Z? (Or all the  AP themes in the Venn Diagram of the course.)  What do the two episodes have in common?  Students seemed to enjoy the choice provided in this assignment, even thought I had pre selected the episodes they could choose from. The question about what the two episodes had  in common provided some surprisingly profound answers and was a much better question than  I had anticipated, especially for the pairs with two very disparate episodes.   Homework (1 assignment), or Day 5: Written reflection using the questions on p.2 of the  “Escoger un podcast” document.   Remind them that they have discussed these questions in pairs.  Remind them of the level of written expression necessary.   They can use their notes, Word Reference, etc.   If they’re writing in class, it can be a timed exercise or not. They can be allowed to use  their notes or not, depending on how much the teacher may want to simulate the AP style free response questions. 

This is the fourth post in a series about using Radio Ambulante in the classroom. Read the first post here, the second here, and the third here.  We talked to Alberto Bruzos Moro to learn more about how he uses Radio Ambulante with his students. 1) Tell us a little bit about the class you teach. SPA 307 is an advanced language course at Princeton University. The main goal of the class is to develop and reinforce students’ accuracy and fluency in both writing and speaking Spanish, and also their autonomy and proficiency as advanced learners of Spanish language. Additionally, the course also aims at raising awareness of the social and ideological values that permeate discursive practices. Students learn to identify linguistic features that characterize different genres, as well as social and cultural factors that aid in the interpretation and understanding of different texts and types of speech. 2) When was the last time you used Radio Ambulante in the classroom? How did you use Radio Ambulante with your students? We work with Radio Ambulante in the second half of the semester. First we ask our students to listen to \"El estudiante rebelde”. We give them this guide with pre-listening documents and questions, comprehension questions and questions for analysis and discussion. In class, we start with listening activities, and then we discuss the program and the social context developed in the guide, trying to situate the narrative in relation to relevant issues such as education and elitism, education system in Chile and the United States, student protest and activism, etc. To follow up, we give a list of episodes to our students. In pairs or groups of three, they have to choose one program and complete this presentation assignment. We have four presentations per section, so eventually all the students listen to five programs in total. My students presented on the following episodes: Los huérfanos, La sentencia, El fotógrafo, #RenunciaYa, Otro país, Postal de San Salvador, and En busca de las palabras. Radio Ambulante y el Estudiante Rebelde por Alberto Bruzos Moro Download the file in slideshare 3) Based upon your experience, what benefit do these stories provide in your curriculum? I find that Radio Ambulante is an outstanding resource to practice listening comprehension, a skill that does not receive sufficient attention from teachers and instructional materials. Moreover, the diversity of voices and accents is ideal to introduce the sociolinguistic complexity of Spanish language and develop students’ critical awareness of the cultural, political, and social dimensions of language variation. Finally, the array of topics covered by Radio Ambulante allows for an approach to teaching Spanish through social justice. 4) What has been the reaction of your students to using Radio Ambulante in the classroom? My students were very engaged. They were able to understand the programs in detail, although in some cases they needed to use the transcript –I told them that they should listen to the podcast once without transcription and then, if they could not understand some part, they could use the transcript and replay the entire program or those fragments in which they had had major difficulties. Radio Ambulante was ideal to arouse my students’ curiosity. The variety of issues and perspectives allowed for purposeful research on the larger social, historical and political context of each program. All in all, my students appreciated the opportunity to deal with authentic materials, i.e. intended for native speakers and free from the stereotypes and misconceptions too often present in commercial textbooks. They felt empowered by content that challenged their ability to understand the spoken language, provided them with a vast array of meaningful vocabulary, and stimulated their critical thinking and their agency for social change.

This is the third post in a series about using Radio Ambulante in the classroom. Read the first post here and the second one here.  We talked to Tiffany Karrow to learn more about how she uses Radio Ambulante with her students. 1.Tell us a little bit about the class you teach I am a public high school teacher and teach at Los Altos High in the Silicon Valley of Northern California.  We are in the second year of a school wide initiative in which ALL of the students have a laptop and are expected to bring it to class every day.   I have been a teacher for 22 years, and this initiative has enriched my teaching.   It is now possible to connect my students with important online resources like  Radio Ambulante.  What was once difficult to do, thanks to technology, is now easy and interesting for both me and for my language students. I teach the 2nd year class as well as AP Language and Culture.  The majority of my classes are between 23 and 30 students who are between 15 and 18 years old.  My AP class is a mix of Heritage speakers and English speakers.  The Heritage speakers are often the first generation in their family to complete the necessary requirements to attend college.  90% of our students go on  to college. 2. When was the last time you used Radio Ambulante in the classroom? How did you use Radio Ambulante with your students? I am currently using Radio Ambulante with my AP Language and Culture class.  We use Radio Ambulante 1 or 2 times per chapter or theme.  In an AP course there are six thematic units: Personal and Public Identity; Families and Communities; Science and Technology; Beauty and Aesthetics; Contemporary Life; and Global Challenges.  For the Contemporary Life theme I decided to focus on heroes and superheroes. Since we were covering this unit in January, we discussed the importance of Martin Luther King Jr, I assigned a text for them to read on José Martí and I also incorporated the RA episode”El Superhéroe.”  It was great practice to hear the Argentine accent and my students enjoyed the episode.   I also created a lesson plan around the episode N.N. for the unit on Families and Community which I am sharing here. N.N porTiffany Karow y Dyana Swank Download the file in slideshare Download the file in slideshare 3.  Based upon your experience, what benefit do these stories provide in your curriculum?  I believe the Radio Ambulante stories are important teaching tools for sharing real life language and culture with my students. The stories are well crafted and the use of authentic Spanish speakers  from a variety of countries and dialects is a great opportunity for my students. The audio gives them a glimpse of how the language is spoken in other countries and how that is different from the academic Spanish of the classroom. 4. What has been the reaction of your students to using Radio Ambulante in the classroom? The majority of my students like RA a lot.  In fact I asked them: What do you think about Radio Ambulante as a way of practicing your listening?  Here are their responses! \"I love it, It’s interesting and is very different from the usual materials we use in Spanish class.  It is very helpful to hear accents from different countries\" \"I like them because they are interesting and they are something you don’t usually encounter in a (text)book\" \"The episodes are interesting and aren’t too long.  I like the fact that the transcript is included [in case I need it]. I think it is good practice [ to listen to RA] but sometimes it is difficult because they speak quickly and have different accents\" \"I like Radio Ambulante a lot because they are about actual situations [in the Spanish speaking world].  Also, there are lots of different episodes to choose from.  It’s easy to access and just start listening.  I like the fact that there is a transcript in case I don’t understand.  I don’t do that all the time but the option is there\"