Going back to my roots!

Yesterday November 24, 2008 I taught my peers merengue, heres the lesson. A dance I grew up on, so it came naturally to me. I did not know if I could teach it in 15 minutes,but I thought giving it a try wouldn't hurt. I incorporated some spanish to give the lesson a cultural focus. My visual aids included flags and key instruments that revolve around this form of music. Even though the music and dance go back to I don't even know probably when I came out the womb I still did not know how merengue originated. Preparing for this lesson plan and doing research I found out. So not only did I have the opportunity to teach a dance that is important to my culture, but I also learned along the way. So back to the teaching I taught step by step basics of merengue, the great part was I felt like the class was interested and engaged any word I spoke they listened. I let them have fun and add their own spice to the dance, this was the opportunity to get creative. It did not stop there they got to hear the music and learned to count to eight in spanish and to finish up the lesson, I let them view a video of men playing merengue on the side of the street in the Dominican Republic. Doing all this made me feel good and proud of who I am that being Puerto Rican, and I'm glad everyone was engaged. This lesson allowed me to share my culture with my students. I believe the lesson was a lot of learning, but many of my peers told me afterwards that they enjoyed my lesson and learned a lot of interesting facts. They thought it was cool that I spoke spanish and that it look like I knew what I was talking about. The lesson to me was meant for the students to be enriched by the culture and just have fun, I gave a small assessment a 3 question quiz to see if they took something away from the lesson. This lesson will definitely be used later on during my teaching career due the reaction I received from yesterday's lesson, but next time i will be sure to include more feedback. Merengue is a part of my culture and I believe sharing it with others will make individuals appreciate the differences among each other.