Building Communities of Language, Culture, and Dignity through Spanish Community-Based Learning

For more than ten years now the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures has partnered with the Center for Social Concerns to develop one of the most robust community-based learning (CBL) programs in language in the country. Today we’re joined by Elena Mangione-Lora, teaching professor in Spanish, and Clare Roach, immersion coordinator at Holy Cross School. Together they created a translation class at Holy Cross in South Bend that brought Notre Dame and Holy Cross students together around numerous translation projects that are now being picked up by dual language schools in Chicago and Los Angeles. Community-based learning has a way of developing expansive educational networks, and Elena describes how her CBL work led her to work with a school for men with special needs in Chile recently.