As a native of Mexico who grew up speaking Spanish, the monthly Spanish Conversation Club Verónica Piedra Góngora facilitates at Queens’ Provisions isn’t necessarily meant to improve her own fluency with the language. It does, however, help her build skills related to her current educational pursuit.
Piedra Góngora currently works at the Genesee Intermediate School District and is pursuing her master’s degree to eventually teach multilingual students. The conversation club allows her to test out pedagogical methods she’s learning in her teacher education program on participants in the group.
“The attendees have different proficiency levels,” she said. “Some of them are just starting, some others are very proficient, so they are more comfortable speaking and having conversations. So that’s how I started bringing some of the things that I’m learning now that I’m taking classes so that I can improve my instruction. I bring it to the Conversation Club, like having some graphic organizers or some sentence frames for them to be able to say, ‘Ah, I can read this expression, and I can paraphrase it with my own vocabulary.’”
Piedra Góngora was born in Isla Mujeres, an island off the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula in the Gulf of Mexico, located in the state of Quintana Roo. She lived in a multilingual household, with grandparents who spoke Mayan while she also learned and spoke Spanish.
“At home, they would usually scold me in Mayan, and then kinda mix it with Spanish,” she joked.
She was an attorney in Mexico, practicing environmental protection law for nearly 10 years, but when she moved to Illinois a little over four years ago, she wasn’t able to practice law in the U.S. due to differences in licensing requirements. There was a period of time after first moving here when she couldn’t work at all because of immigration laws. To pass the time, she enrolled in ESL classes for adults to gain more proficiency in English. That also opened up a new career interest for her.
“My instructor asked me at the end of the course, ‘Hey, Veronica, would you like to work with students?,’” Piedra Góngora said. “I couldn’t work back then, but I kept improving my English, and when I was able to work, I interviewed at GISD, and I got the job.”
She moved to Flint about two years ago, buying a home in the city’s historic Carriage Town neighborhood, and began hanging out at nearby Queens’ Provisions. As she made friends in different circles in the city, her knowledge of Spanish came in handy and people sought out her advice for how to help people in different environments who didn’t speak English.
“Some friends that work at the friend of the court or banks or the police, they would have families that come or customers that come and they wouldn’t know how to communicate because they only speak Spanish,” Piedra Góngora said. “So they’d ask, ‘Do you know what expressions I can say to break the ice, for them to feel more comfortable?’ So I just started making some notes for my friends, like this is what you can say to them when you greet them, this is something that you should ask or be respectful not to ask. I just started giving tips like that to my friends around Flint.”
Those impromptu conversations caught the attention of Queens’ Provisions owner Emily Doerr, who approached Piedra Góngora with an idea.
“I live two blocks away and Emily said, ‘You’re always hanging out here, would you mind having kind of like a conversation club or building a space for the community to be exposed to Spanish?,’” she said.
The club started officially about a year ago. They meet at 6 p.m. once per month on the last Tuesday of the month.
“I’m studying in the evenings and work in the mornings, so I only committed to once a month, but that’s how we started,” she said. “So on the last Tuesday of the month, we meet, we drink some wine, and we practice.”
The group provides an environment for a wide range of Spanish speakers to get together, practice, and learn. Piedra Góngora said the group averages about eight people per week, with some weeks having as many as 15 people and other weeks only having a few participants. The experience levels also differ.
“Maybe they learned it in high school and they haven’t practiced,” she said. “Or maybe they traveled to Madrid, España, last summer and they want to continue improving or learning their Spanish.”
Piedra Góngora plans out lessons and activities and tailors them to the group. Sometimes, those lessons are specific and practical, like if someone has an upcoming trip to a Spanish-speaking country planned and wants some advice on vital conversational needs. Sometimes, when there isn’t a specific need, she’ll simply theme conversations around common experiences, like pets.
“I try to bring topics that are related to everyone,” she said. “Some people will tell me they’re gonna travel, so I’ll say, okay, you probably need survival vocabulary. Other people say, ‘I’m having an interview and I will probably have some people who speak Spanish, and I want to look professional.’ So that month, I bring vocabulary for more work or professional (settings). Other times, if you’re traveling and you get bit by a mosquito or something, a spider, and you need to go to a doctor in Central America and communicate how you are feeling and where it hurts. When you are in a foreign country with a foreign language, you need those survival skills.”
The sessions are informal, but there’s a loose structure, with some conversations, some reading, some games, and other interactive ways to get people communicating mixed in. She also tries to mix more experienced speakers with less experienced ones so they can help each other. The group is open to anyone who wants to come and learn, even if it is just to listen.
“It’s amazing to see how they evolve from being very shy, very quiet, in the beginning,” Piedra Góngora said. “I always say, ‘If you just want to listen, that’s okay.’ You don’t have to speak if you don’t feel comfortable. You can always grab a glass of wine and just hang out. Sit wherever you want and just listen or overhear. People that are eager to participate, they start with a bit of words. I bring a lot of games. So we kind of build that confidence, and then we read a little bit depending on the topic. And after reading, we do some activities, and they break into different groups to just have conversations. They help each other and kind of make them feel more comfortable and self-correct. I’m not the grammar police, so I’m not here to say, ‘Oh, that’s incorrect. That’s not the way to say it.’ You’re free to just go with the flow.”
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