January 2010

Got Medieval has a great post about textbooks and how they do or do not make a difference to the professor.

I didn’t read the article he is responding to, but I still got a lot out of the post.

Your prof has a budget of exactly no dollars to evaluate potential textbooks for your class. He’s completely at the mercy of whatever scraps the publishers will send him, whatever’s in the library, whatever he has left over from his own undergrad days, and whatever he can beg off a colleague who taught the class last term.

Exactly. I just found out I have a different book in my class than I expected. So I wrote the publisher and asked for a copy of the text. I hope I get one soon or I’ll be buying it myself.

8. Collection of autobiographical stories for the Latino/a literature course:
Mi Voz, Mi Vida: Latino College Students Tell Their Life Stories

Questions, before: What sorts of stories are you expecting? Why? How will these stories differ from African-American stories or Asian-American or Anglo-American stories?

Questions, after: Did the stories meet or exceed your expectations? Did you find what you were expecting? If not, why do you think that is? If so, what does that say about the book? What story most touched your heart? Which story can you relate to the most? Why?

I like that this is a collection of the works of college students. So often our students feel marginalized. Yet here, voices of people just like them are in print.

A contact of mine at a respected private university told me last year that her uni is starting to retreat from the adjunct trend because it discovered that students whose professors came and went didn’t feel as attached to the uni, and the administration was afraid of the consequences for future donations.

from CC Dean

7. Another novel for Latino/a literature:
…y no se lo tragó la tierra by Tomás Rivera (Spanish / English edition)
OR Tomás Rivera: The Complete Works (includes the novel and his influential critical articles, including “Into the Labyrinth: The Chicano in Literature”)

Other resources:
Discussion guide by Ramón Saldívar
Glencoe McGraw-Hill introduction and discussion guide

Note: I haven’t read all of this yet. However, I seem to be favoring female authors. I don’t want to do that. So, here’s one of my token male authors.

The school offered two eight-hour days of online one-on-one teaching. I stayed for six hours the first day and put three weeks’ worth of my class online. Very helpful. There was an amazingly helpful online course creator there.

The second day, I stayed for three hours. I found out how to put up the electronic versions of my exams up. I figured out how to upload my pictures into my course as well.

And I found out that the reason there is no model class is because they created one last year or the year before and the teachers freaked out because they thought it was going to be required to teach it as it was. (I was among the freaking, but I wasn’t very wave-making as an adjunct.)

What I didn’t know how to do yet was use my gradebook.

That’s important, don’t you think?

6. Novel in Latino/a literature:
Sandra Cisneros The House on Mango Street

Questions, before: What do you expect this story to be about? Is there anything exotic about it? How is that expressed? How do you expect it to be expressed in the story?

Other sources:
Essay and lesson plan on experiencing poetical prose
Teacher Vision discussion questions

I read some reviews for this book and I could not believe how underated it is and how many people didn’t understand it. Some people say that it is just a collection of random thoughts, but that is not the case. You see, this book a whole story and instead of having chapters of episodes, it contains “vignettes” which the dictionary defines as “a short descrioptive literary sketch”. Each vignette contains an important part of the story. The whole story describes the thoughts, feelings, and meories of Esperanza, an hispanic girl living in the poverty corner of the city, with dreams to escape her world. At the same time, she grows up and starts to leave her childhood, while learning about the fears and dangers of the world she never knew of before. Becomeing an adult turns out to be a hard challenge. The first vignette called “House On Mango Street” is meant to describe the setting. The second “Hairs” describes the looks and characteristics of the characters. The third called “Boys and Girls” tells the difference between genders, which is important because the story deals with men and women. The following vignette called “My Name” paints the image of self and the feelings of hope and the future. Therefore, these vignettes are not mere collections of random thoughts and uneducated language, but a poetic story with a well drawn setting, characterization, and gripping tone. Even though the story evolves around hispanics, this is a book for all races. The poverty and dreams of home remind me of the experiences of African-Americans and Chinese, as well as Caucasians. When I was in a Creative Writing class, we wrote many vignettes and if you are a student in Creative Writing you HAVE to get this book and share it with your class and teacher. It will help you understand the importance writing free verses, for this is the best example of vignettes I have ever seen. The voice of the author does not sound profesional or too fancy, but like the ordinary words people say today. it is a story of our time and a tale for all. My only complaint is that it was too short! I wanted to know more about what Esperanza does and her wishes. I also wanted to know what happened to her after the story. Even so, it is pretty plain to see that Esperanza learned how to escape from her cruel world, unlike the people who never knew where she went. I haven’t seen such an exquisite story of our modern times since I read the “Joy Luck Club” about two years ago. If you want to read a beautiful story about growing up, living life, and with musical poetry, you must read this book.

from an Amazon review

5. Novel for Latino/a literature:
Julia Alvarez How the García Girls Lost Their Accents

Questions, before: How would you show the confusion of a family moving to a new country? How would keep the reader off balance, as the girls are off balance?

Questions, after: Why is there so much pain in the book? Where does the mental illness start? How does the story resolve? Could you tell the story in chronological order? What would be lost by doing that?

Research topics: When did the United States encourage, fairly forcefully, the loss of accent and native language in immigrants? How was this done? What was the end result? How has that changed? Why? What is the result of the changed policy? What were the advantages and disadvantages of the old policy? What are the advantages and disadvantages of the new policy?

Other sources:
Penguin discussion guide
Tacoma Reads Together discussion guide
ENoteslesson plans, available for $30

4. Short works of Latino/a literature:

Michelle Serros “Senior Picture Day” (Lit for Composition, Pearson Longman)
Anna Lisa Raya “It’s Hard Enough Being Me” (Lit for Composition, Pearson Longman)
Luis Valdez Los Vendidos (Lit for Composition, Pearson Longman)
Sarah Cortez “Tu Negrito” (Lit: A Pocket Anthology, Penguin)
Simon J. Ortiz “The Serenity in Stones” (Lit: A Pocket Anthology, Penguin)
Self-identifies as Native American, and is, but is also Latin American. Is there a place for multiple ethnicities? Does everyone get to choose the one they are?
Julia Alvarez “Bilingual Sestina” (Lit: A Pocket Anthology, Penguin)
Alberto Ríos “The Purpose of Altar Boys” (Lit: A Pocket Anthology, Penguin)

3. Beth Johnson’s “The Professor is a Dropout”

Questions, before: What do you think the title means? Why would this title be used? Does it catch attention? Does it hint at the story? Is it a teaser? What do you think will be in the story? It is a biography. How much of a biography can you tell in six to ten pages?

Questions, after: What do you think about the problems of full-immersion English language education? How does Professor Quintanilla feel about it?

Research topics: Look into bilingual education and see what the expectations and rules are for that. How successful has it been? Compare it to immersion education. Which is more successful? How is success measured?