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Teaching Statement Arturo Mrquez Gmez In an effort to maintain a professional connection to my students, at the end of each semester I ask them to send me a postcard from wherever they may find themselves in the coming weeks and months. They are to write to me in Spanish and tell me about their progress with language acquisition, a trip to a Spanish-speaking country or any other related occurrence in their lives. When I began my new job as Visiting Instructor at Gettysburg College this fall, I found a colorful reproduction of a Joan Mir piece from the Woman, Bird, Star collection in my mailbox. It was a postcard from Louise, a student who had taken the Early and Contemporary Writers of Spanish America course that I taught last spring at Brown University. Louise wrote, My family and I took the train from Perpignan Station to Barcelona, just like in Roberto Bolaos novel Estrella distante (Distant Star). Fortunately, the end of our story was happier than that of Soto, the books tragic character. I love Barcelona and all of Gauds architecture. Louise ended her postcard by wishing me luck with my new job. She left me thinking about the woman writers that we studied, from Catalina de Erauso and Sor Juana to Gabriela Mistral; about the bird as the symbol of the interminable voyage of writers and their characters; and, finally, the star that crowns the titles of Mirs piece and Bolaos novel. Louises postcard reminded me of her excellent final paper in which she wrote about the doubles with which Bolao populates his novel in order to create what she called a kaleidoscopic dialogism. I enjoyed reading her postcard and appreciated the way in which she framed this personal experience with her academic one at Brown. Her trip to Barcelona emerged as a life lesson that tied together scenes from the novel and the work of artists like Gaud, Dal and Mir. Louise recently wrote to me again to ask for a letter of recommendation. This time shes headed to Ecuador. Her journey continues. I believe that my job is to facilitate those learning voyages by providing the elements for generating meaningful communication in my language classes and reading strategies and theoretical tools in my culture, literature and film courses. My intention in all of my classes is to connect what happens in the classroom and the academic community to a global context by fostering a reflexive environment of respect, trust and cooperation. When provided with such learning conditions, my students become active participants in their intellectual explorations and develop an inquisitive attitude towards knowledge. One of my main goals is to develop a dialogue with my students that I believe to be fundamental to developing a sense of community. The postcard is, in a certain sense, a conversation that I maintain with some students over time and distance. My interdisciplinary educational background and teaching practices are the result of the work that I have done at four distinguished academic institutions: University of Chile, Brown University, the Summer Language Program at Middlebury College and Gettysburg College. At University of Chile, I acquired theoretical foundations in the fields of Psychoanalysis, Educational Psychology, Sexology, and Gender and Queer Studies. At Brown, I received integral pedagogical training through the language department and specifically in the course Theory and Methodologies of Foreign Language Teaching, which provides students with an opportunity to be observed and receive constructive feedback about their strategies and teaching styles. I also had the chance to participate in several workshops offered by Browns Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning and the Cervantes Institute. My work at the Middlebury Summer Language Program allows me to be part of a diverse and intensive teaching community. I was originally hired as a bilingual assistant when I was a graduate student, and for the past three years I have taught intermediate courses. Completing my masters degree and then teaching at Middlebury has allowed me to explore the reasons why students decide to learn about the Spanish language and culture, a topic that has always fascinated me. It also has exposed me to the concept of the language pledge by which learners commit to speak only the target language, a strategy that I reproduce in all my classes. More recently at Gettysburg College, working in the Spanish Department has given me the chance to strengthen, share and develop new strategies and material for my three Fundamental Spanish courses. In my language classes, I create an active environment that motivates learners to go as far as they can with their explorations of language and cultures. I take a communicative approach to these courses, and situate learning around specific real life situations and contexts using activities such as dialogues and skits that are planned in stages and provide students with opportunities to exchange information While encouraging

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students to reach a deeper understanding of the extensive vocabulary and grammatical forms found in textbooks, I draw on material found in contemporary debates presented in the news, films, music, art, and history, among other sources. At all levels of learning, I emphasize the students capacity of develop a broader vocabulary and be strong on grammar issues while insisting that this acquisition be achieved in the context of daily activities. I believe that films and documentaries are some of the richest sources of cultural material available to us and provide an entertaining way to learn another language. For example, I introduce students to cultural topics such as the changes that resulted from Bolivias Water War by screening Icar Bollans Even the Rain. Each time I include this type of material in a course, I develop activities designed to foster learning before, during and after the movie. I provide my students with the basic vocabulary that they will need to analyze a video product and review the directors body of work and the social contexts and movements to which they belong. During class, I focus on two or three scenes that bring together the main aspects of the piece. In writing classes, I move progressively from general issues to more detailed analyses of the elements of descriptive texts, narration, argumentation and the academic essay. In culture and civilization courses like the one that I designed at Middlebury, I focus on cultural competence and present topics that emphasize what Hispanic cultures share rather than the differences between them. For example, this past summer, my students and I discussed a wide array of current social and cultural events in the Hispanic world. I asked the class to analyze political posters and then had the students work in pairs to design their own banners protesting homework assignments. The result was an interesting and enjoyable discussion about education during which they developed arguments, negotiated meanings and reflected on their own learning process. When I have designed and taught literature courses like Early and Contemporary Latin American Literature, which I offered at Brown last spring, I have emphasized the enjoyment of texts as well as close readings. I encourage students to pay attention to language, particularly its richness and expressive potential. I ask them to send me emails containing short comments and questions before class, and then use them to set the stage for our discussion. During class, I present an overview of the period and brief critical responses to the text. Students are asked to explore the authors background and present their findings. In order to encourage discussion, I present topics based on the students own questions. I also use a variety of support materials. Maps are extremely useful for explaining the history behind colonial texts, photographs and paintings are crucial for understanding the aesthetics of modernism, and video interviews bring student closer to authors and their life stories. For example, I recently taught Julio Cortzars House Taken Over, a short story about a brother and sister who live together in a big house. One day, they are suddenly surrounded by mysterious voices that fill up the space until the siblings are forced out of the building. For our reading of the story, I taped a blueprint of the house to the floor of the classroom. Students started off sitting comfortably while they read aloud. As the narrator began to describe the strange noises, students moved to different rooms in the imaginary house until we found ourselves outside of the classroom. This was a highly successful approach that allowed the students to experience the text and all of the sensations that it evokes, from the coziness of the home to the discomfort of the house taken over. I discovered the advantages of working with technology in the classroom at Brown, Middlebury and Gettysburg. My familiarity with tools that have been developed over the past several years allows me to connect with students who were born in the midst of a virtual and digital revolution and enjoy all that it has produced. Blogs and Wikis can drive composition classes, and literary texts, films and other media can be created and presented through vehicles like Prezzi and Vimeo. The web pages that I developed for my Culture and Civilization (Middlebury) and Early and Contemporary Writers of Spanish America (Brown) courses proved efficient tools for facilitating the exchange of information. The process of learning and teaching in which we are engaged presents constant challenges. Each day, we are confronted with the rapidly changing and increasingly diverse needs of our students. I have taught at a number of educational institutions and I am confident that the pedagogical mentoring that I received at each one of them has prepared me to meet these challenges. I have gained the experience and perspective that will allow me to succeed in teaching languages and literature in the context of the 21st century.