Teaching Multicultural Literature: A Workshop for the Middle Grades
Introduces teachers to ethnically diverse American writers and offers dynamic instructional strategies and resources to make works meaningful for students. This workshop includes eight one-hour videos in which teachers model effective approaches - based on reader response, critical inquiry, cultural studies, and critical pedagogy - for using multicultural works in the classroom. They also demonstrate activities and practices that engage students in critical discussions of race, class, and social justice, and empower them to take action for change. The featured teachers, along with leading educators, provide reflection and commentary throughout the programs. Authors share information on their works and about their lives through interviews and classroom visits.
Episode Descriptions
1: Engagement and Dialogue: Julia Alvarez, James McBride, Lensey Namioka, and more
In New York City, Carol O'Donnell and her students explore themes of multiple worlds and dual identities. Through a series of innovative drama, role-playing, and writing activities, students examine the social and cultural experiences of the characters, and reflect on their own definitions and experiences of identity.
2: Engagement and Dialogue: Judith Ortiz Cofer and Nikki Grimes
The workshop begins with a profile of the writer Judith Ortiz Cofer and then moves to Vista, California, where Akiko Morimoto and her students read short stories from Cofer's collection, An Island Like You. They respond personally to the works, examine the author's use of figurative language, and then make intertextual connections with books they've read throughout the school year. Students then explore poems from Nikki Grimes's Bronx Masquerade and examine the writer's craft.
3: Research and Discovery: Shirley Sterling and Laura Tohe
At the Skokomish reservation in Washington state, Sally Brownfield and her students study and connect with the literature and issues related to the Native American boarding school program through community involvement and self-examination. The class visits the Skokomish Tribal Center to interview tribal elders about the impact of the residential boarding program on the community.
4: Research and Discovery: Edwidge Danticat, An Na, Laurence Yep, and more
In Clayton, Missouri, Kathryn Mitchell Pierce's students read works that explore issues of historical and contemporary immigration. Pierce uses multicultural picture books to introduce students to a wide range of perspectives and to set the stage for their novel study.
5: Historical and Cultural Context: Christopher Paul Curtis
Laina Jones and her students in Dorchester, Massachusetts, explore The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis. Jones uses non-fiction, documentary film, and historical photographs to contextualize the events in the novel and the Civil Rights movement.
6: Historical and Cultural Context: Langston Hughes and Christopher Moore
Stanlee Brimberg and his students in New York City study the important contributions of African Americans to the United States and the recent discovery of the African Burial Ground in Manhattan through factual texts, video, art, photography, and poetry. As a culminating activity, the students take a field trip to the African Burial Ground Memorial, and then design their own postage stamps to commemorate the site.
7: Social Justice and Action: Alma Flor Ada, Pam Mu–oz Ryan, and Paul Yee
Laura Alvarez and her students in Oakland, California, examine different perspectives and experiences of immigrants, and then formulate and defend positions on issues with which they connect personally. Students conduct research, including interviews with family members and nonfiction readings. As a culminating project, students write and revise persuasive letters to raise public awareness about the issues they've examined.
8: Social Justice and Action: Joseph Bruchac and Francisco JimŽnez
Lisa Espinosa's students explore themes of representation through literature, documentary film, photography, and music. Students look critically at past and current media depictions of African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans, and examine ways in which artists and writers from within those cultural groups, including Joseph Bruchac and Francisco Jimenez, represent themselves.
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