Adams Spanish Immersion and the Ascension Parish Project: Two Service-Learning Projects, Two Levels of Success

Abstract

Recognizing the growing Hispanic presence locally and nationally, students in several classes at the University of St. Thomas (Twin Cities) undertook two Service-Learning projects to better comprehend the varied Hispanic impact. In one project, students worked with the Adams Spanish Jmmersion Magnet School as tutor-mentors to examine how immersion education may help to improve cross-cultural community relations. The Ascension Parish Project aimed to help a late-Nineteenth-Century Catholic parish in inner-city Minneapolis, strnggling with transition from a relatively homogeneous race, class and cultural composition to multi-ethnic, mixed racial and increasingly bicultural diversity. In both projects, the goals included investigating the process of integration and assimilation of the Latino majority population into the older society; linguistic apprenticeship and practice; community service, and heightened cultural awareness. The conference presentation summarized below examines the differing situations of the two initiatives and their varying levels of success.