Newman Teachers Invited to Conference in Panama

[FULL STORY]

This March, two Newman teachers will travel to Panama City, Panama to present at the Southeastern Council for Latin American Studies (SECOLAS) annual conference. Melanie Krob and Stephanie Davis will present a paper that they collaborated on that covers the Panamanian Flag Riots of 1964 and its impact on the Panamanian national identity. SECOLAS is one of the oldest and most prominent organizations for Latin American studies, and the two teachers will present alongside university researchers from around the world.

Krob and Davis co-teach a class on Latin American history and three weeks of that class are dedicated to a unit onPanamanian History. The class mirrors the Latin American history course that is part of the School’s Global Studies Program, but this class is taught entirely in Spanish. This unique characteristic allows the class to count for either a world languages or history credit. Its new approach to history has piqued the interest of teachers and schools around the country and especially in the Independent School Association of the Southwest (ISAS), of which Newman is a member.

They are working together to write a scholarly article entitled “El Día de los Mártires: High School Student Revolution and the Emergence of Panamanian national identity.” The paper covers the conflict that arose when Panamanian teenagers tried to raise a Panamanian flag on land that the United States leased from Panama, and in so doing ignited riots that swept across the country and the Panama Canal Zone. The paper could be published in Annals, a journal that collects the best papers from the conference.

In addition to presenting at the conference, the two teachers have also been invited to lead a workshop at the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese this July in San Antonio. The two will share their lesson plans to teach other Spanish teachers how to incorporate lessons on Panama into their classes. Last November, they did a similar presentation for the Louisiana Council for the Social Studies.