Introduction and Rationale
Increasing enrollment of Spanish-speaking students in my workplace, an urban vocational high school, has created a need for deeper knowledge of Latino culture. To quantify this increase, and to guide me in making choices for this literature unit, I asked school officials for a student demographic breakdown. Results bore out my own intuition, that indeed our Latin population is on the increase. Additionally, as a result of informal talks with small groups of students, I concluded, since the school does not have records of specific group origins, that the largest two Latino subgroups in our school by far are those with Puerto Rican and Mexican heritage. In the last 3 years, my high school has seen a 41% increase in Hispanic student enrollment, which has increased the percentage of the whole student population from 8% to over 14%—almost double in that short period of time! If this trend continues, radical reshaping in school operations, particularly in arenas heavily reliant on language, is inevitable.
With a focus on the Mexican and Puerto Rican groups, this unit begins for students with summaries of the political and immigration histories of both Puerto Rico and Mexico, focusing on the broad patterns and important events since 1900 that provide at least a general context within which to read the literature of these people. Knowing that discrete Latino groups are not so much featured in high school literary anthologies, I thought I would flesh out a well-rounded unit including short and long fiction, drama, poetry, non-fiction, and a fair variety of non-print media relevant to each of the two groups in focus. Research and reading helped me to make choices for teaching in these genres that are fresh, and that I think provide some unusual literary experiences for twelfth grade students poised to enter a multi-cultural workforce. My idea from the beginning was to employ material that both inspired immediate recognition among the Latino population, and also provided insight into some of the traditions and cultures of the two groups, thereby creating a kind of featured status for members of the two Latino groups, while at the same time providing a path to understanding for the Anglo and African American students.
The intended participants for this teaching unit are twelfth grade English and Honors English students at Howard High School of Technology, a vocational technical high school in Wilmington, Delaware. Howard is an urban high school of approximately 800 students, focusing on career preparation; but students must also complete studies in the standard curriculum of a comprehensive high school. They must study English, Social Studies, Mathematics, and three years of Science. Spanish is the only second language offered, and there are no arts electives. In the absence of fine arts study, teachers continually attempt to incorporate music, art, and drama into their courses. In this unit, I make some attempts to expose students to fine arts, music, and drama, as well as long and short literary forms.
Multiculturalism is a fact today in public school. Few teachers, at least in urban settings, work among groups of kids with homogeneous ethnic, racial, or religious backgrounds. The war in Iraq has brought Middle Eastern language and culture into focus. Immigration is a front-burner political issue, partly thanks to the wider concerns about "homeland security." My personal rationale for devoting study time to Latino groups has a lot to do with helping students break out of their cultural insularity, especially in the environment of a vocational school, out of which most students will secure employment in highly diverse workplaces. And awareness of cultural differences is simply healthy for people, when you think about how much a varied perspective and appreciation for others helps a person to define him or herself.
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