Latin America and the Caribbean in the Classroom: Resources

Fall 2003, No. 89
Compiled by Nan Volinsky

Click here for a list of around 150 links to Games, Puzzles, Quizzes, Trivia on Latin America, including flashcard games, “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,” hangman games, and crossword puzzles. One example is the South America Map Puzzle in which your student learns the countries of South America and their capitals by putting all of the countries in the right places.

Spurlock Museum at UIUC

Currently under development, the Educational Resource Center will hold materials for loan to the regional education community, including videos, books, CD-ROMs, artifacts, and complete topical learning kits. For more information, call (217) 244-3355 or email Kim Sheahan at ksheahan@uiuc.edu. The Museum offers two types of programs: Outreach programs -- those presented in the classroom or organizational meeting place, and In-house programs — those presented in the museums themselves. Click here for a list of events that refer to Latin America, such as Oral Traditions Around the World: Cinderella (K-6), Oral Traditions Around the World: Trickster Tales (K-6), Digging Back 8,000 Years (5-8), and Create Your Own Museum (K-12). For instance, with “Animals in Oral Tradition: Armadillos” (K-3), students hear how the armadillo outwits the fox in a South American trickster tale, and then learn how he lives and thrives in real life. The program ends with an armadillo craft.

Documentary Film, “Señorita Extraviada”

In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, Women Make Movies is pleased to offer a special discount on one of the most important films of the year - Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Lourdes Portillo's groundbreaking documentary “Señorita Extraviada.” This gripping and emotionally charged film is a haunting investigation of the more than 300 women who have disappeared from the streets of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico since 1994. Most of their bodies have been discovered weeks or months later, murdered and abused, dumped in a desert that provides few clues. Their deaths remain a mystery, their histories almost completely erased as authorities have ignored pleas for justice from the victims' families, and the crimes have gone unpunished.

Portillo's film has brought much-needed public attention to perhaps one of the most overlooked human rights issues in the world today. Next month the Latin America Working Group, the Washington Office on Latin America, and the Mexico Solidarity Network, in coordination with Congresswoman Hilda Solis (D-CA) are planning a delegation to investigate the current state of the Juarez murders and to call for an end to the endemic impunity that plagues the investigations. This will be the highest level US delegation to Mexico with the explicit purpose of addressing the Juarez murders.

As this campaign gains momentum, WMM would like to offer a special 25% discount to university libraries, educators and community organizations using this film as a teaching tool to increase awareness and generate dialogue. For more information on “Señorita Extraviada,” including how you can help, visit here.

The American Forum for Global Education has several publications of note.

  • Exploring Global Art, by Toby Needler and Bonnie Goodman (1991) for Social Studies, Culture Studies, and Art, is a compilation of lesson ideas and background information for an introduction to the arts of Japan, China, India, Africa, Egypt, the Middle East, and Latin America. Emphasis is on gaining understanding of cultures by exploring the role of contemporary and traditional art. Slide packets are available from Sandak Slides (an order form is included in the book). 198 looseleaf pages with binder, $25.00.
  • Exploring the Third World: Development in Africa, Asia and Latin America, edited by Del Franz (1987) for Social and Global Studies, is a curriculum unit that examines linkages between U.S. communities and the developing world. There is some dated terminology, but it is well designed with relevant activities. Teaching guide, map, charts, and 10 student booklets, $15.00.
  • The Aztec and Inca Empires This material highlights the Empires of the Americas and provides analysis of the difference in political styles of the Aztecs and Incas. Adated from Latin America: Land of Diversity, edited by Linda Curcio-Nagy, Roger Thayer Stone Center for Latin American Studies, Tulane University, and the Tinker Foundation, Inc. Grades 9-12.
  • A Comparison of Images: Guan Yin and The Lady of Guadalupe In this intermediate ESL lesson, students compare stories from two different cultures, Chinese Gentle Guan Yin and the Mexican Virgin of Guadalupe. They analyze the significance of Gwan Yin/Guanyin, a key devotional figure in Chinese Buddhism. The lesson is supplemented by a reading comprehension sheet and vocabulary. Grades 9-12.
  • Latin America “Speaks,” by Ruth M. Wilson, is a curriculum unit that focuses on the Caribbean Slave Trade. Students learn about autobiographies and become cognizant of the fact that Caribbean Slavery was as brutal as American Slavery and recognize that Spain colonized parts of the Caribbean and brought slavery to the islands.

CHOICES is a program of the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University that engages students at the secondary level in international issues and contributes to a renewal of civic engagement among young people in the United States. Choices' curricular resources and instructional programs bring international public policy issues to life.

  1. Teaching with the News provides curriculum materials and ideas to connect the content of the classroom to the headlines in the news. Topics cover a range of foreign policy and international issues.
  2. Caught between Two Worlds: Mexico at the Crossroads is a five-day classroom unit that seeks to bring Mexico's evolving national identity into sharper focus for American high school students. In this unit students are asked to see the world through Mexican eyes and to contemplate current Mexican choices in the areas of economic development, political reform, and foreign relations.
  3. The Cuban Missile Crisis: Considering its Place in Cold War History. Like no other region of the globe, the Caribbean Basin has served as a testing ground for U.S. foreign policy. From the Monroe Doctrine to Cold War containment, from the Big Stick and Dollar Diplomacy to the Good Neighbor Policy and the Alliance for Progress, the countries of the Caribbean and Central America have felt the full weight of their colossal neighbor to the north. The Cuban Missile Crisis: Considering its Place in Cold War History probes the complex, often troubled, relationship between the United States and Cuba, and examines the crisis that brought the world to the brink of war. The unit analyzes the Cold War dynamics that led to the Cuban missile crisis and examines the decision-making process within the Kennedy administration at the height of the confrontation with the Soviet Union. The background reading surveys the evolution of U.S. involvement in the Caribbean and Central America from the early 19th century to the present and prepares students to consider thoughtfully the causes and ramifications of the Cuban missile crisis.

    Framework of Policy Options: In this unit, students are placed in the role of President Kennedy's ExCom. Knowing only what members of ExCom knew at the time, students wrestle with the options considered at the time.

    Suggested Five-Day Lesson Plan: The Teacher's Resource Book accompanying The Cuban Missile Crisis: Considering its Place in Cold War History contains a day-by-day lesson plan and student activities. An optional lesson introduces students to important milestones in our country's relationship with the Cuba and places it in the context of U.S. involvement Caribbean and Central America.

    Day One focuses on the tangled triangle of U.S. -Cuban-Soviet relations that led to the Cuban missile crisis.

    Day Two and Three draw students deeper into the missile crisis through a simulation set in October 1962 in which students assume the role of advocates of three options faced by the Kennedy administration.

    Day Four contains an exercise that explores the Cuban point of view of the missile crisis. An optional lesson examines the role of the letters exchanged between Nikita Khrushchev and John F. Kennedy during the crisis.

    Day Five asks students to examine U.S.-Cuban relations since the missile crisis.

From the Teacher’s Resource Database of the American Forum for Global Education comes Latin America in A Contemporary Context. “What should educators teach students about Latin America? To understand today's Latin America, teachers must first have a firm understanding of Latin America's past. Here we have tried to summarize how Latin America should be viewed in today's global world, and to highlight some strategies for teaching. Three complete lessons! Latin America's rapid change in recent years prompted The American Forum to take a closer look at this important and dynamic region.

A conference was organized that asked the question: What should educators teach students about Latin America? The conference was hosted by the New York University Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies and the Columbia University/NYU National Resource Center on Latin American Studies. Although many answers were suggested, most agreed that to understand today's Latin America, we must first have a firm understanding of Latin America's past. Here we have tried to summarize how Latin America should be viewed in today's global world, and to highlight some strategies for teaching these ideas. This text originally appeared in Issues in Global Education (NY: The American Forum for Global Education, Issue #145, 1998).

The focus of the “Teaching Latin America's Past” unit is Maya Culture -- The Art of Storytelling whose objectives are to explain the role of stories in helping us explain a culture, to analyze the Mayan culture based on their stories, and to draw conclusions about the changes that occur when an oral story becomes a written story.

The next unit is “Teaching Latin America's Present Using Personal Narratives,” as a growing body of personal narratives translated from Spanish and Portuguese into English exists for the study of Latin America. This unit uses a narrative in the voice of Rigoberta Menchú.

The last unit is “Teaching Latin America's Future,” which focuses on NAFTA and Mexico’s free-market participation as discussed in "Caught Between Two Worlds: Mexico at the Crossroads," a publication developed by the staff of Choices for the 21st Century Education Project, a program of The Thomas J. Watson Jr. Institute for International Studies at Brown University.

Korubo: Expedition Contact! National Geographic urges educators to share the ongoing Korubo expedition (June-October 1996)—presented for the first time anywhere here on the World Wide Web—with young people in their classrooms. The story raises essential geographic questions: waterways as highways and (sometimes) lifelines, conflicts between tribal and political borders and the rights of indigenous peoples, allocation and protection of scarce natural resources. Supplement your exploration of this vital and complex region with the article “The Amazon: South America’s River Road” in the February 1995 issue of National Geographic. Links take your students to the Mission that provides details about the task at hand, Maps for a geographic context, News about the expedition and its dangers and dilemmas, Portfolio for information about the flora and fauna, the places, the Korubo, and the members of the expedition. The Dispatches link takes them to firsthand accounts from the members.

There are links to Web-based resources and a Bibliography that provide background information about the expedition.

Links to Lesson Plans offer helpful resources and classroom activities suitable for primary and secondary students, brought to you by National Geographic’s Geography Education Program and National Geographic Online. For instance, one activity is called "Speaking the Same Language": Divide your students into one or more paired groups. Let one group pretend to be members of an isolated tribe resembling the Korubo, defensive and suspicious after frictional encounters with a few outsiders, and the other an outside party bent on contacting the tribe. Let the outside party determine in secret whether they wish to be a friendly expedition hoping to protect and study the tribe or a band come to exploit some of the tribe’s resources, such as timber or minerals on tribal lands. Students in different groups in each pair should pretend they speak different languages and cannot understand words spoken or written by students in the other group. The students must devise some other means of communicating their intentions between groups. Have them decide how they will respond to actions by the other group, such as offerings of gifts, efforts to shake hands, or the display of a possible weapon. After playing out the scenarios your students devise, have them discuss their experiences with the entire class. Were most of their efforts to make contact successful?

Two Ancient Cities. In this lesson, students review basic facts about two ancient American civilizations: the Inca and the Maya. Then they will compare two ancient cities from these civilizations: Machu Picchu, of the Inca Empire, and Chichén Itzá, of the Maya. For each city, students will research the surrounding geography, the main structures and their purposes, the inhabitants, the building materials, the general layout, and any other revealing information or artifacts from the city. Finally, students will consider how culture and geography influenced the lives of people in each city. Connections to the Curriculum: Geography, world history, architecture. Connections to the National Geography Standards: Standard 4: "The physical and human characteristics of places."

Lost King of the Maya. NOVA follows archeologist Bill Fash and his team as they excavate the burial site of the founder of a Maya dynasty in Copán, Honduras, and explores startling new information about Copán revealed by linguistic analysis and biological anthropology. The program (Original broadcast: February 13, 2001) introduces Yax K'uk Mo', the legendary king who entered Copán as a conqueror and remained to found a dynasty; reviews the history of the Maya people, who built towering pyramids and developed sophisticated systems of writing and astronomy more than a thousand years ago; reveals the involvement of the Maya in ritual warfare and human sacrifice; examines the purpose of Maya observations of the stars and planets; recounts how the Maya symbol code was broken in the 1980s; and offers a new historical insight into the collapse of the Maya empire.

This web page offers links for viewing ideas, classroom activity, ideas from teachers, and interactive resources for students that for instance teach them how to read Maya hieroglyphs. The objective of the Classroom Activity is for your students to understand and apply the Maya Long Count calendar system. The "Calendar Count" activity aligns with the National Science Education Standards for Mathematics for Grades 6-8 and 9-12: Number and Operations.