Tacos have been having their moment for quite some time now. You can find them on almost every restaurant’s menu and Taco Tuesday is serious business for lots of people. My students have not been immune to this craz, for years they’ve asked to go to the popular Mexican restaurant in town or suggested Taco Bell. My easy answer to both was: “Why go somewhere you’ve all already been?” Last year, I finally found the solution to their begging: walk to the smaller, lesser known Mexican grocery store and restaurant just three short blocks from school, something that easily fit into our block schedule. The establishment was newer to town and mostly unknown to my white students, because the majority of the clientele are the latino families in the area. My goal in taking my students there was to give them a new experience within the Spanish-speaking community, one that was less influenced by mainstream American culture. I also hoped they would continue to return to the restaurant after the field trip.
I worked closely with the restaurant owner to pre-order the students’ taco requests and she so excited to create a closer connection to the school community. They set up a special table welcoming the students and posted about their visit on their social media. My students loved everything about the day, they loved the tacos, wandering around the store and trying new products. Not surprising, but their favorite purchase was the largest bottles of Jarritos soda they could find, which I’m sure their teachers later in the day all appreciated! Because we had done a food unit earlier in the year, they were excited to use their knowledge to look at packaging and the menu to see which words they knew and quite a few were even brave enough to try to use their basic Spanish skills to talk with the staff.
This field trip is the single most talked about thing from all my years of teaching and even a year later I still have students telling me that it was their favorite experience in Spanish class or even in all of high school. It is something they will remember for years to come. The best part is that my students have continued to return to the restaurant, many of them with their families. My personal favorite is that when one of my students got his driver’s license 6 months later, the first place he drove to was there to get tacos. As a teacher, this makes my heart happy. I obviously want my students to learn Spanish, however I also know that not all of them will master the language, the reality is that many of them will take a couple years in high school and then move on. Knowing this, I want to teach them how to explore the world around them and try new things. I want them to learn how to embrace the variety the Spanish-speaking world has to offer and give them the opportunity to connect to the Spanish-speaking communities they’ll find throughout their lives. Teaching them how to be a part of the bigger world around them and realize that diversity makes us stronger are some of my most important goals as a teacher.
Unfortunately with the school closure, I won’t be able to take my Spanish 1 students for tacos this year. However I hope that future students will have the opportunity. Either way, I will continue to have conversations with my students about race and diversity. A resource that I particularly liked this year was the series Tacos of Texas. Two Taco Journalists (how awesome is that!?) travel throughout Texas to talk about tacos with the people that make them. A common message from the short episodes is that you can’t love tacos without loving the people that make them. Especially now, that message is more important than ever.
It is easy to focus on the Communication and Culture standards, however there are 5C’s and Communities is an important one. My hope is that through continued experiences like getting tacos in Spanish class, my students connect to Spanish-speaking communities throughout their whole lives.
