Learning Through Service: A testimonio on the Pedagogical and Scholarly Benefits of Service Projects Conducted by Teachers of Spanish

This article argues the pedagogical and scholarly benefits to Spanish language faculty who themselves conduct community-engaged service projects in Spanish-speaking communities. The author explores the term “service” as it is understood in higher education in relationship to teaching and scholarship, positing that service projects conducted by faculty constitute engaged scholarship as defined by Boyer (1996), and that foreign language educators are especially well-prepared for this kind of scholarship and intellectual activism. The article includes a testimonio by the author describing how teaching a community poetry class to Latina immigrants has improved her university teaching and shaped her scholarship. Finally, the author suggests that conducting a literature-based project in the community could reinvigorate foreign language educators’ commitment to the humanities during the current so-called “crisis of the humanities.”