Print VersionCIBER News
High School Teacher Attends Business Spanish Workshop
Participants listen to a speaker during the K-12 Teachers Workshop: Spanish for International Business.
Theresa Glowacki, a Spanish teacher at Greendale High School in Greendale, Wisconsin, received support from the UW-Madison CIBER to attend a workshop designed to help teachers incorporate business Spanish into the curriculum. The second K-12 Teachers Workshop: Spanish for International Business, was hosted by the Florida International University CIBER in Miami on September 29.
Speakers from southern Florida companies who do business in Spain and Latin America and professors who teach business Spanish at U.S. universities presented participants with lesson plans and activities tailored to their classroom needs.
Glowacki, who teaches third- and fourth-year Honors Spanish, hoped the workshop would help her incorporate business Spanish into a program at Greendale in which students work with a community in Southern Peru to help sell their handmade items. “This project has opened my students’ eyes to the possibilities of international commerce,” she said. She came away from the workshop with concrete examples of activities she can build into the curriculum, including writing a business memorandum or e-mail for a Spanish-speaking audience, learning vocabulary for business use, and learning how to interact with people from Spanish-speaking cultures in a business setting. She also may build a resume and cover-letter writing assignment into an existing goal-achievement unit.
Glowacki anticipates several benefits for her students coming out of her experience at this workshop. “First of all, students will benefit because they will see a direct purpose for learning Spanish,” she said. “Secondly, students will learn the language and culture together so they can plan for meaningful interactions with Spanish-speaking people. Lastly, students will enjoy learning the language in the business context to develop tools for themselves in the future, like the cover letter and resume.”