Standard 10: Leadership and Collaboration

The teacher seeks appropriate leadership roles and opportunities to take responsibility for
student learning, to collaborate with learners, families, colleagues, other school professionals and
community members to ensure learner growth, and to advance the profession.
Artifact 1 pictures from the International Festival on November 20th, food prepared for the
festival and Colombian artenesias
Class: SPA 101 & SPA 201
National Standards for Foreign Language Learning: 2.1, 2.2, 3.1, 3.2, 4.1, 4.2
On November 20th, 2014 we held our annual international festival in the Language Arts
building. Many countries were represented and I represented Colombia. I set up a table with
all of the Colombian products that I own. Some of the typical items that I had on the table were
Colombian pesos which is the money used there, handcrafted items like the little wooden house
that is in a photo as part of the artifact for this rationale as well as a musical instrument, called el
alfondoque which is also pictured. Also I brought the little shoes shown in the pictures, called
alpargatas, as part of the items I wanted the students to see. Those were actually a gift to my
oldest son when he was a toddler from his Colombian grandmother.
For the first part of the festival, I was dressed in a ruana, an outer garment made from
wool that has no sleeves and that is typical dress in Colombia. It is very similar to the poncho. I
also made two Tres Leches cakes to share with the students who came to the festival. Tres
Leches means three milks and I had already made it for my classes before so when I told them I
would be making it for the international festival, I was sure that would entice some of them to
come. My intention was also to make empanadas for the festival but it was my first time making
them and for some reason the dough would not stay together with the stuffing inside when I fried
them. They still tasted really good, but they did not look so appetizing.
Over twenty of my students came to the festival. Honestly the room was packed and as
the students walked around to see all of the booths, when they stopped by mine, I talked to them
about the items that I had on the table. They were very curious and thought that the items were
interesting. El alfondoque (the musical instrument) sounds like water when flipped over and they
thought that was really neat.
Those of us that put the festival on really wanted to show the students how interesting the
different cultures were and introduce them to even more culture than they get in the classroom.
As stated by Dema & Moeller (2012), since language emerges from societal interactions, L2
learners cannot truly learn the language without acquiring knowledge about its culture and native
speakers (Dema & Moeller, 2012, p.78). This festival gave my students more of an
opportunity to learn about the culture of Colombia, especially with regards to its products and
perspectives, as well as many other cultures that were represented that day and all of us had fun.
There was such a high turnout that I heard others saying we needed a larger venue next year.

Dema, O. & Moeller, A. J. (2012). Teaching culture in the 21st century language classroom.
(Faculty Publications: Department of Teaching, Learning and Teacher Education. Paper
181). Retrieved from: http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/teachlearnfacpub