ABSTRACT
How can a university with a small Latin@/x student population on a campus create a space where community, bilingualism, and Latino cultures are valued? In 2007, we created the C rculo Juvenil de Cultura, a program that had the dual purpose of serving Latin@/x students on campus and Latin@/x families and children in the community. Its primary goals have been 1) to promote Spanish-language maintenance and acquisition and foster dual-language linguistic and cultural competency; 2) establish a network of community partners including the children’s families, and educational, artistic, technological, and philanthropic institutions; and 3) promote native/heritage speaker and L2 learner college student engagement with the community through the various roles they play within the program, e.g., as volunteer, teachers’ aides and instructors. This chapter proposes to discuss the program’s design features, the educational opportunities offered to undergraduate and graduate students, and some of the successes and challenges we have encountered in the past 10 years. The main focus will be on describing in what ways this particular sort of service learning has promoted the university students’ interaction - linguistic and cultural - with the immigrant community and members of other partnering organizations of the Latino community. We will provide evidence of the impact of this work on students’ learning and appreciation of the language, cultures, and communities of the Spanish-speaking world. Student surveys, interviews, materials, and artifacts produced by the students will document the complex ways (Einfeld and Collins 2008; Simons and Cleary 2010) in which this service learning and community engagement project has benefited students. Finally, we will discuss some of the challenges we have encountered in terms of the sustainability and scalability of the program.
