In recent weeks, the RDS Gallery brimmed with ofrendas created by students in various grade levels, as part of the School's observance of the traditions of the Días de los Muertos. In addition to creating a shoe-box ofrenda dedicated to the memory of someone who has passed in their own lives, John Kohler's and Matthew Krause's eighth-grade Spanish students were given an additional project: creating a two-dimensional ofrenda that represented their own lives. Decorated with symbols, colors, and mementos, each posterboard was a representation of a student's self-reflection.  "How would I want to be remembered if I were to die today?" was the question that students asked themselves and shared with classmates as they delivered oral reports in Spanish to explain the symbolism of their displays.

"Learning Spanish in middle school is more than verbs and conjugations.  It's even more than learning about culture.  At Redwood Day, it's also about learning about self and identity," explains Kohler. "This project is perfectly positioned developmentally, right at the age when students are crafting a new sense of identity and trying to answer the questions 'What is me?  Who am I?' Yes, it takes a great command of vocabulary and verb tenses to write a paper about your display and to explain it in Spanish to the class, but it also takes the willingness to look deeply at who you are as an individual and to express that meaningfully to your peers."

"Some of the most important learning from this exercise -- both for students and for me as a teacher -- came from our 'debrief' after the oral reports. As a teacher, I always want to know what worked best for students and how I can improve upon a learning experience next year, and 'debriefings' are a core part of how I approach my work as a teacher.  True, authentic learning comes out of having time to reflect on an experience and thinking about what you've done, both for students and teachers. Reflection is the processthat helps learning to develop real depth and set like glue. Students seemed to really enjoy the project and had fun collecting all the bits and pieces that represented their lives.  Some found it a little creepy.  And others had great ideas about how to deepen the experience next year, perhaps by interviewing one another and creating ofrendas that represent classmates' lives."