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When
I think back to the beginning of the semester, it is more like
thinking back a year. I don't believe I have had a more
productive semester and done more projects for a class, out of
class than during this semester. I
believe the Melba Elementary School has benefited from our
extra-class activities. You might check with Mike Dudley,
the principle, on how he felt about my interaction at the
Wednesday night reading sessions and with the class PowerPoint
presentations. Perhaps I should get his telephone and
write it here for future reference. You
wanted us to get involved with multicultural books.
Although many of them were oriented toward elementary classes,
there were a lot for secondary as well. One major benefit
of the class was my purchasing, reading and learning to
appreciate picture books for young adults. I purchased Gathering
the Sun because a single image that I saw in a journal
article impressed me to buy the book. From
this book I was able to scan images that showed parents
interacting with their son and daughter and their children
performing activities which were not gender constrained. The
Hispanic role models also reminded me of my youth on the farm
and the Mexican camps in Melba and on the south-side of Nampa,
off of 12th Avenue. I remember seeing the children at the
end of the rows playing all day, getting bored and waiting for
their parents to finish the day's work. It brought back a
lot of memories, but some things have changed, some haven't,
even though I feel Cesar Chavez has made a difference and
working conditions are better and more standardized. The
second major benefit were three books that I read, 1) Habibi
(Islam/Palestinian), 2) One Bird (Japanese culture) and
3) Zia Summer, a Hispanic murder mystery. The
book, Habibi, allowed me to learn about the Arabs and the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a non-threatening atmosphere of
the novel. From this single novel, I was able to envision
an entire thematic unit based on the Middle East. This led
me to a collection of other books for young adults based on
Middle East writers or Middle East topics. I look forward
to reading and learning with my students when I get the
opportunity, which may come as early as this fall, to present
this type of lesson. The
book, One Bird, presents an aspect of the Japanese
culture from the viewpoint of 14-year-old Megumi. There
were so many things that were accurate and could serve as
examples to review and scrutinize certain practices among our
youth that do not benefit them or their society. The
book Zia Summer came as a result of one of the articles I
read on multicultural literature. There are several more
books that I hope students choose to read so that I can read the
books also. I look forward to developing a list of
exciting mystery novels from different cultural perspectives. I
feel like I can read as if I were an elementary student, a
middle school student, and more easily, a secondary
student. I have a better feeling for what might be
interesting to them and how to find other books according to
theme or genre that might interest them beyond the classroom. Although
I do not intend to lead class discussions or recommend to entire
classes books on gay and lesbian issues, I feel comfortable in
speaking about the topic. If. or when, a student is
interested in finding a book on the topic, I believe I can help
him or her find something or have more choices after speaking
with me than before. Thank
you for opening up the world of multicultural literature to
me. It is helping me to find and express other voices
within me that I not known how to express in the past. As
a result, I hope my students will find an environment where they
will be invited to seek, discover, share and express who they
are. |
