Aug. 16, 2010 issue
Goshen students study regional Latino culture
By Jodi H. Beyeler Goshen CollegePage:
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GOSHEN, Ind. — Sometimes all it takes to encounter another culture is to cross the street.
Ana Juarez, left, Goshen College director of the Latino Studies Semester in Northern Indiana, talks with the student participants, from left, Kellyn Yoder, Ivette Sifuentes, Jair Hernandez and Chris Ballge. — Photo by Jodi H. Beyeler/Goshen College
This summer, four students participated in the Goshen College Latino Studies Semester in Northern Indiana, the first domestic location for the more-than-40-year-old Study Service Term program.
All of the students grew up in northern Indiana.
Jair Hernandez, a sophomore, said the program gave him a different perspective.
“It has opened my eyes to things I wasn’t aware of before,” Hernandez said.
The students studied Spanish, with two learning conversational skills and more advanced students learning professional skills, research and literature.
Ivette Sifuentes, a junior, said that although Spanish is her first language, her teacher corrected her grammar and helped her not to speak in Spanglish, a mixture of English and Spanish she grew up with.
Hernandez and Sifuentes, as Latino students, are more familiar with the culture they studied this summer, said Ana Juarez, program director.
“They are learning their own culture in a different way and have more appreciation for their own culture,” Juarez said. “They are learning more the reasons why different groups immigrated, as well as what people and organizations are already doing.”
The group took field trips, had guest speakers and visited cultural events. They met the Fort Wayne Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, attended a quinceanera (a 15th birthday party) in Michigan, toured Latino businesses in Goshen, explored Chicago’s Mexican and Puerto Rican neighborhoods, participated in an immigration rally in Indianapolis, heard about immigration from different perspectives and traveled to Toledo, Ohio, to volunteer at a migrant workers camp.
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