The Expert: Cesar Suarez, Senior Development Specialist For The City Of Peoria and Volunteer Secretary Of The Great Peoria Hispanic Chamber of Commerce
The Connection: I reached out to three different people and was given an email for the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. I “cold called” with an email and received a response rather quickly.
The Meeting: Cesar and I met over a Google Meet session. The meeting was primarily in Spanish with moments of English. By the end of the conversation, I was intrigued by all he is doing for the community and his future visions.
The Tour & Discussion: For this tour, took me through his office and what he does on a typical day. Cesar explained his responsibilities as a senior development specialist. He visits and follow ups with new business sites, as well as communicates and directs clients trying to start a new business. He dedicates time as a volunteer secretary, where he is helping develop the Peoria Hispanic Chamber of Commerce by getting the word out about the group and recruiting new members. He discussed his use of the Spanish language as an interpreter.
Cesar works from his office using technologies for day-to-day tasks. Some technologies mentioned were Microsoft Office, Microsoft Teams, Outlook, and Mailchimp. For the work he does for the chamber of commerce he uses Google programs as well as Facebook. When asked about other programs, especially for translation purposes, he mentioned he outsources and uses local organizations or most flyers and government documents already come in two languages.
When asked more about his interactions with his team and clients, he described his use of the language as more of an interpreter. Because he works at the City Hall building, he is called several times a day to help with translations and has meetings with clients using only Spanish. Cesar described his use of Spanish as a way of building relationships and moving past the English language barriers of culture and understanding. He commented that face-to-face interactions are of utmost importance to him because he sees that many of the documents and applications used are “outdated” and create fear so he prefers face-to-face meetings to discuss business and guide clients to success. Using the f2f as his primary media, allows him to build relationships and help new owners have success. Cesar spoke about having documents in Spanish available for his clients, but the f2f communication is more than an open tab with an application or piece of paper.
As mentioned before, Cesar’s role with the Spanish language is more of a translator or interpreter. He is doing things with technology to help assist him as a communicator and in building relationships with those he is helping. He is creating access and meaning to the language by using technology through translation of documents, mails, newsletters and/or flyers. He also is dependent on local organizations to help translate other materials to help further and enhance his guidance with clients. He takes these technologies and helps himself be available and relate to clients and understand the meaning they need to become successful business operators.
Teacher Implications
As a high school Spanish teacher, my ultimate goal for my students is to go beyond the language and teach my students to see the world around them as well as recognize the culture, the language. Teaching the skills of the language is key for communication but it is also a lot more. Although Cesar may be using more basic uses of technology, my students need to have a clear understanding of how to use technology in the correct ways for proper communication. For example, listening to Cesar mention the use of a translation button on documents and flyers, this is a big concern I want to relay to my students. I always want them to understand the use of the “translation button”. It is not always a simple click and go, I want my students to have full awareness of how to check for proper use of the language, proper translation and meaning, and proper message conveyed. This could be an activity I incorporate where I allow students to interact with Google Translation and demonstrate to them the right and wrong uses of a technology like this. Creating these meaningful technology lessons and incorporating them to show my students that the language is not just readily available to them with a button can help show them the thoughtful use of technology as a whole when using a foreign language.
Cesar’s minimal incorporation of technologies I found to be refreshing as I always want to incorporate technologies in a purposeful manner and more than a substitute. I want my students to use and comprehend the language and this is beyond any translation button on a site.
Through my discussion, it gave me the opportunity to go beyond the technology and realize it is about the communication and barriers that can be presented, but also allowed me to see how to teach students about using technology properly with the language. I want to make sure to emphasize this with my students. I will teach them how to properly use technology but it is more important to understand the significance of using the language for communication.
Thank you for sharing your tour. Your statement about wanting to "incorporate technologies in a purposeful manner and more than a substitute" is insightful. As educators we often strive to integrate technology into the classroom, but after reading about your experts personal experience we can see technology is not the only solution. Face to face communication is also essential in the workplace and you can work to help students build their world language skills so they can interact on a global scale.