Strategies—Section 3: New Mexico meet Mexico: When I look at you I see me.
The third and final stage of the unit will focus on contemporary life in New Mexico, especially as it is influenced by our connection to Mexico. I will provide a small selection of literature from which to choose, dealing with life in the United States as an immigrant or as a native Spanish many-generational inhabitant whose family has retained many of the cultural traditions of either Spain or the Spanish colonial period. The four books I have selected have themes of family connections and self-discovery. They are all set in modern times. Students will be making text-to-self connections. Discussions as a class or in literature circles will center on the themes of what makes a home. How does place make us feel at home or not at home? Who am I in relation to my family? How does my family and my personal history influence who I am? How do they influence my likes and dislikes and talents?
Students will read one of four literature selections in their literature circles. Border Crossing is the story of a twelve year old American girl of mixed racial background who journeys to Mexico by herself to discover her Mexican family. It is on a fourth to sixth grade reading level and will be assigned to the advanced English readers. A mirror story, Going Home, shares the theme of returning to family in Mexico from the United States and the feelings of home and also estrangement that this return evokes. Also in English, it is written on a second/third grade level, so I will assign it to L2 readers and English reading students who are struggling readers.
The other two stories are in side-by-side text. In My Family/En mi familia is a heartwarming tale about customs brought from Mexico and practiced in the new land. Among other stories, it contains a La Llorona tale. An easy reader, it will be assigned to students who need simple vocabulary. Another second/third grade level text is the story Magda's Tortillas/Las tortillas de Magda. Students will sense a personal connection in both these stories, as they deal with familiar customs and family interactions, thus stimulating a sense of comfort and safety.
I will finish reading aloud the story of Esperanza's journey from Esperanza Rising preparatory to the children finishing the writing of their own stories. Class discussions will focus on how students identify with Esperanza and her mirror, Miguel. How is my story like theirs?
Students will write a final draft of their personal journey stories, working closely with a partner in order to share ideas or questions about content and/or grammar and structure. They will apply their learning about peer and self-editing, and my expectation will be that the final copy will hang together structurally, ideas will be developed and flow smoothly and that there will be very few grammatical, spelling or structural errors. I will pair native speakers of Spanish with English native speakers as much as possible because by this point students should be fluent enough in each language to move back and forth between them in conversation. From here on, the literature circles will meet to share stories and fine-tune them, checking for sequencing and flow.
Children will illustrate their stories. They may paint or draw the illustrations. Upon completion of both text and drawings, they will read their stories aloud to the class and exhibit the illustrations. Later all the stories and drawings will be strung together in the accordion-like form of Aztec codices. These codices will be our class histories and the mirrors in which to see ourselves.
Another project that will tie the unit together will be a gathering of "La Llorona" stories. We will read a short story entitled "La Llorona/The Weeping Woman," written in Spanish and English side-by-side text. These "Weeping Woman" stories abound in New Mexico as well as in Mexico, often as cautionary tales warning children to stay away from rivers and arroyos. The plot is frequently concerned with a mother who has either lost or killed her own children and now haunts the rivers and arroyos weeping, wailing and seeking those children. She is La Malinche, but this knowledge is becoming lost or obscured as the La Llorona stories become more stylized and farther removed from the original source.
I will ask students to collect these tales and bring them to class, either written down or retold en voz alto. It will be fun to share them and most children enjoy the thrill of being frightened as long as they are in a safe environment. Also, I think the children will be surprised when they realize these stories are told in Mexico as well as New Mexico and that they originated with La Malinche.
As a final wrap-up to the unit, we will review all the children's products and briefly review the books they have read. We will discuss the long journey we have traveled from the time of the Spanish conquest of the Aztec people to today in our classroom, in our families and in our world. In what ways have we learned that we are similar to one another? In what ways have our feelings about each other changed?
In the academic realm, we will discuss what we learned about our history. How has each child's language skills improved? Is it easier than it was at the beginning of the unit to speak English? Spanish? Are you a better reader and writer than you were? In what way?
What was the easiest thing for you to learn? What was the most difficult? What was your favorite book? Why? Who was your favorite character? Why? What activity did you enjoy the most and why? What character or subject we studied would you like to know more about?
And finally, the most important question: What did you learn about yourself?
It is to be hoped that students will have gained a deep and abiding appreciation for their shared cultural roots, that they are able to see the mirror image of themselves in each other and that they are, therefore, well on their way to becoming bicultural as well as bilingual and biliterate. Moreover, I anticipate that a spirit of home, a spark from the sun of the lost kingdom of Aztlan, will have been rekindled in our classroom and that the spark will continue to grow and produce the heat and light of friendship and good will throughout the year, not only in our classroom but in our everyday world.
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