SCET Journal 2020

Broadening Diverse Perspectives

Unit Planning to Provide Diverse Perspectives Through Literature

the student reader know her life may be different from theirs, but also has the potential for the student reader to analyze and think deeper through discussion. Kristina wanted to choose a novel where adoles- cent students with challenges could see themselves represented. She chose Percy Jackson and the Olym- pians: The Lightning Thief (Riordan, 2005) because she learned that the main character overcomes a weakness to become great. She wanted students to expand their definitions of what diversity means by focusing on a book that honors different abilities. As Kristina read, she loved how the author used “disabil- ities” as super powers, stating, “I think that students that use a wheelchair for mobility have a limited se- lection of books that show them as demi-gods! I also wanted my female students to be represented, and this novel had several females represented as demi- gods.” Both Katie and Kristina designed lessons for units focused around these novels. They concentrated on diversity issues, while also teaching students literary elements and writing to meet various English lan- guage arts standards. In the following section, Katie and Kristina discuss their chosen lessons which are outlined in a table for each novel. The Units The House on Mango Street For this unit plan, students will learn different skills through a series of four lessons based on Sandra Cisneros’ (1984) novel, The House on Mango Street . Through these lessons, my overall goal is for students to become familiar with a culture that may be differ- ent from their own and also highlight the importance of other cultures. My personal goal is for students to develop respect for other cultures and also feel that their own culture is valued and accepted within my classroom. For my first lesson plan, I chose an inquiry-based instructional strategy to introduce Hispanic culture. I have students placed into a jigsaw group that will research one aspect of Hispanic culture. Each student within each jigsaw group is responsible for generating his/her own question about a particular aspect of the Michelle Avila Vanderburg, Katie Spragg, Kristina Flanagan

Incorporating diverse literature in classrooms is an avenue for providing students with “window and mirrors” (Bishop, 1990) where they can either see a reflection of themselves in the characters or get a glimpse of the experiences of others. When teachers plan activities around literature with diverse char- acters, they can provide authentic opportunities for students to gain meaning about the world we live in. Below is an explanation of how two pre-service teach- ers and a university professor worked together to plan units around diverse young adult literature. How These Units Were Created Both Katie and Kristina were undergraduate stu- dents in a university education program. They took an independent study course on Young Adult (YA) Literature with Michelle [first author] as their professor. For part of this study, Katie and Kristina were asked to learn more about YA literature, with a particular focus on diversity. They read professional literature (e.g. Bucher & Hinton, 2014; De Leon, 2002; Landt, 2006; Short, Tomlinson, & Lynch-Brown, 2014) that discussed diversity in YA literature. Following discus- sions, they were each asked to choose a YA novel that incorporated diversity in some way with the ultimate goal of creating a unit to use in their future classrooms. Katie chose to read and focus on The House on Mango Street (Cisneros, 1984) based on a friend’s recommendation. Katie shares: [My friend] mentioned The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros and talked about how much she loved it. She told me even though she was not from a Hispanic culture, she still related to it when she read it because as an adolescent since she came from a slightly different culture than the rest of her peers. I wanted to read this novel because I was able to see its impact on my friend before I even read the first page. This novel is written through vignettes that resem- ble the ways students talk about their own lives to friends. The style allows adolescents to easily under- stand the narrator and connect with her. Katie found that the narrator mentions her culture in ways that lets

South Carolina English Teacher

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