003.A.13.6 2012Cookies and Conversations

COOKIES AND CONVERSATION 4 OCTOBER 2012

From: Christine GonzalesSent: Friday, October 05, 2012 4:58 AMTo: Sidney BrownSubject: RE: Cookies & Conversations

Sidney,

I thought you were wonderfully accommodating of all my quirks.

FYI, when we started at noon, colleague and Japanese professor Takashi Ebira came by and also spent the hour receiving students at our table.

I accomplished c. half of my three goals:

1) I want to encourage more students to learn languages because everyone should learn another language. I have some great quotations regarding how this helps people, but they were not easy to see, so I need to fix that; maybe I could consult with you.

I also have & want to develop more foreign-language activities students can do at an information table (e.g. at the recycling fair I had a recycling activity students could do in either Spanish or German, and everybody chose one of the two languages. BTW, after recycling waste material they contemplated the need for them to 'recycle' their brains by learning another language.)

2) I don't feel a great push to convince students to major in languages, but rather to decide to learn another language to use in whatever their major is.

3) I always want to celebrate and value bilingualism and biculturalism which any person already has: too many of them have been raised in this country to feel like second-class people and to reject their second culture and language. Example: knowing/learning Spanish first is absolutely the best way to tackle French.

I cannot hear students when there is a table between us, nor can we interact as equals (essential to my goals) unless we are sitting together.

I shilled people as they walked by, informing them that this was a Humanities/Social Sciences event, inviting them to talk with me about learning another language, and/or go get a cookie and talk to a colleague about something else. I would have liked a giant event sign saying something like 'cookies & talk to a professor'---something real short and obvious. For my table I would have liked a life-sized human figure of a famous person with a sign saying something like 'New language, new you, HERE!'

I should have prepared better short marketing materials explaining what unique help SLCC offers language learners ( 11 languages, free access to conversation tutors and in-class conversing in context, for example).

I do not like having only ne chair and speaking only one-on-one to people, because too many of the other passers-by 'escape'. Part of valuing biculuralism is to find out some information about each person or to make language-learning more reachable by conversing with them in their target language (yesterday one student-learner spoke to me in German, two in Spanish & c. five in French.)

I think I need to have a set-up whereby several people can sit in a semi-circle and do one of two fast 'games' in a second language of their choice. One would be a small group activity and the other would be individual. That way, when they finished the game, they would go away and I could get the next epople to sit down. I did this once before at a Humanities Fair. I shilled people to 'come and play my language game', and when they finished, I had them choose a sticker prize, and that got them to move on, plus it informed them about some of my goals.

Probably what I need is a large wall for some large informational signs, then a small round table for the short activity, plus stickers.

Also: I needed a concrete goal for students: a poster of the Spring 2013 foreign-language classes with CRNs, but my supervisor said that was not feasible because the schedule is not yet finalized,, so that poster or handout was missing. Could the Cookies and Conversation have been held right after the schedule was ready and just before registration started, so we that we could have had concrete, specific courses to have recommended to the students? One student actually asked if he could register for the Spring 2013 language course right then and there.

Christine

From: Sidney Brown
Sent: Thursday, October 04, 2012 4:04 PM
To: Stephen Ruffus; Marianne McKnight; James Dykman; Connie Spanton-Jex; Christine Gonzales
Subject: Cookies & Conversations

Thanks to all of you for supporting our “cookies” event today. It was fun, but we need to know if it met needs of the students and the departments.

Would you please take a moment and let me know your thoughts about the

event? Please consider the following questions:

Did you feel it was a good use of your time? Why or why not?

How many students did you get to speak to?

Tell a little about the experiences you had with students.

If we do it again, what changes would you suggest?

Any other thoughts?

Please be honest. If you had a great time but it didn’t meet your needs or the needs of students we need to report that to our supervisors. We will not identify you when we submit our report.

Thanks!

Sidney McGuire Brown

Academic Advisor, Humanities

Salt Lake Community College

TB 315

4600 S. Redwood Road

SLC, UT 84123

(801) 957-3866