How to Teach About Access to Water in Your Spanish Class

Do you ever start a new unit in Spanish class and your students give you that glazed over look? For as much as you do your happy dance and try to get them excited, they Just. Aren’t. Into. It. It can suck the wind right out of your teaching sails. Yep, it stinks. So why do we do it? Why wouldn’t we take every possible opportunity to expose our students to engaging content that encourages them towards global citizenship? Read on to find out how I transformed my content and got my students hooked on social justice. 

After teaching the “food unit” in my textbook for the millionth time I knew that we had to do something more important with the topic. I wanted to incorporate social justice but I was worried that it would be too much for my novice learners. I needed to find a topic so essential and familiar that they could easily relate to. Water. Agua. 

Many in the United States don’t think about the great privilege of having access to clean water. My students certainly take it for granted. So it really challenged their thinking when we started studying areas in our country and in Nicaragua that don’t have easy access to potable water. Their mouths dropped when they learned that many children in Nicaragua have to walk hours just to get to a drinking well. And that some have no choice but to drink water that isn’t purified. And it really hit home when we studied how in areas like Flint, Michigan the water became so contaminated that the community had to drink bottled water. 

My students were so enthralled that we decided to analyze the access to water that we have in our own school and local community. Do our fellow community members really have easy access to water? Have droughts reduced the fresh water available? 

This topic sparked so many interesting debates about the rights to water. Who is responsible for making sure that everyone has access to clean water? Interested in finding out the step by step process of our access to water unit? This post breaks it down.  

Have you incorporated social justice into your classroom? I’d love to hear all about it! Let’s connect on Instagram or Facebook and tell me about your experience.