Civics, Culture, and Language: Supporting Immigrants through the Citizenship Process

I am Darrelstan Ferguson, a third-year Ph.D. student in the Hispanic Languages and Literatures Department. I am working on my thesis prospectus at the moment. My research area concerns contemporary Afro-Cuban theatre and the problematization of race and gender in the works of Afro-Cuban playwrights like Gerardo Fulleda León, Eugenio Hernández Espinosa, and Fátima Patterson. I will work on this project over the next two years.

I ended my summer immersive fellowship with the CCLA Citizenship Preparation Programme on Saturday, August 29, 2020. It was an incredible 12 weeks of forming professional bonds with like-minded people across states and countries. The programme is based in Los Angeles, California, and there were volunteers from states outside California like myself and one volunteer who would join us each class from Panama.

I would say that my mission with this immersive has been accomplished: I set out to prepare native speakers of Spanish, as best I could via remote delivery, for the U.S. citizenship interview. I trained them via Zoom to answer questions in English from their N-400 application forms, as well as questions about American history, geography, and politics which comprise the Civics test. In the last two weeks of the programme, I drilled them with mock interviews, and some 90% of them were able to demonstrate how well they grasped the lessons. They could do the real interview right away and pass with ease, but unfortunately most will have to wait another four months or so because Covid-19 has caused major delays.

My hours were extensive but well worth it. I got the chance to do both in- and out-of-class translations, from English to Spanish and vice versa. This was my first time having to work with such subject matters as American history, geography, and politics in Spanish, and I was surely put to the test to amass as much knowledge and vocabulary as possible in order to demonstrate proficiency in translation. I worked tirelessly each week to translate slides from English to Spanish and then do video recordings of them for the CCLA Citizenship Programme YouTube channel. I also worked with particular students outside of the scheduled class hours in sessions we named “practice coaching.” This gave these students an additional and more intimate opportunity to practice the lessons. They were grateful for the extra help.

My Ph.D. program constitutes two areas: language and literature. With this fellowship, I was specifically able to call on and develop the language skills I am honing as a doctoral student. Some of the language-teaching skills and experiences that I brought to this immersive were: the confidence to deliver lessons in understandable and spontaneous bits, the awareness of cultural differences and the ability to build rapport despite this, the discipline to constantly prepare and revise lesson plans, the knowledge of different foreign-language teaching methodologies, and the sensitivity to student reception which enable me to switch appropriately among these.

The immersive experience has impacted my professional vision in various ways. One, I am considering obtaining a TEFL certificate despite being a native speaker of English. I believe that with this qualification I could become more proficient at teaching my language to Spanish speakers, since my training has always been concerned with teaching Spanish to English native speakers. This experience has also highlighted how important it is to make civics and cultural lessons integral rather than marginal parts of foreign-language classes. Third, more related to the literary/cultural studies aspect of my Ph.D. program, the immersive has heightened my latent interest in migrant studies. I would really like to probe the issue of what it means – politically, culturally, linguistically, etc. – to be American and Hispanic.

I have some truly memorable moments from my 12-week journey with CCLA. I managed to forge some personal connections with the Hispanic students I worked with, particularly because I could speak their language. If classes ended early, they would always take advantage of the remaining time to learn more about me, and I would do the same with them. I have learned about their migration stories and unique cultures, and they were always fascinated to hear me talk about my island home, Jamaica. When I shared my story about having lived and taught in Facatativá, Colombia, for eight months in 2016, it finally made sense to them why a Jamaican could speak their language so well and was so fond of their culture. From one migrant to other migrants, our stories pointed to the clear fact that the United States was, for us, the land of opportunities, the land for new beginnings, and a sanctuary of hope and refuge, despite all its ills.

One of the most refreshing lessons offered to me by this immersive is that team work really makes the dream work. Central to teamwork is communication – one that is democratic rather than arbitrary. My supervisor, Nicole Miceli, allowed us to guide her vision for the programme by allowing us different opportunities to share our personal teaching experiences. Several times she had to change her original plans for the programme as a result, but this was for the ultimate benefit of the students.

Immersives can be time-consuming and even inconvenient at times, especially if you and your organization are working in different time zones. The reliance on technology makes it a precarious task to undertake; if technology fails, your project bears the brunt. All of this makes the job more challenging but, ultimately, more rewarding.

I feel that I am now more open to other career possibilities as a result of this summer immersive experience. I have always been bent on the idea of staying in academia and becoming a professor, but now I see that career fulfilment comes in various forms. There are community projects and organizations that can benefit from my language training, and I could even form my own organization around social projects that involve non-native English speakers, particularly Hispanics. This would mean that I need to become more aware of the social issues affecting these communities, and I thank Humanities Engage for making me this much more sensitive to communities that lie outside academic ones. Moving forward, I know that my task is to play my part in helping academic communities not seem so exclusive, independent, and isolated from the wider communities they are in, but rather be integrated parts of them, deploying personnel and functional skills to serve them.

I thank Humanities Engage, again, for leading by example in this regard, and for choosing me to help lead in this regard. I salute Dr. Marques Redd, who has been my point of contact with Humanities Engage, for leading this Pitt initiative!

Darrelstan Ferguson
Hispanic Languages and Literatures
October 14, 2020
 
Learn about all the Summer 2020 Immersive Fellows and their experiences with their host organizations.