Critical Pedagogy beyond the Classroom Walls: Community Service-learning and Spanish Heritage Language Education

Abstract

This article describes a critical service-learning initiative in which college students of Spanish taught in an after-school Spanish class for young heritage language (HL) speakers at a local elementary school. We contextualize the program within broad curricular revisions made to the undergraduate Spanish program in recent years, explaining how critical pedagogy and our students’ experiences motivated the design of the program. After describing the program, we analyze reflections from participants that show how the experience helped them take their critical language agency beyond the classroom walls and integrate university, school and community knowledges, as both the college students and the children they taught came to view their cultural and linguistic heritages to be of educational and public importance.