by Carmen M. Martínez-Roldán, Columbia University
It has been inspiring to learn about different ways of engaging teacher candidates with literature. In this last blog, I want to share some examples from my own teaching experience. Engaging teacher candidates and in-service teachers with literature is one of my favorite things as a teacher educator. As other instructors, I use different strategies to discuss the literature.
One of those strategies is to read the novel using different perspectives (Wolf, 2004). For instance, when responding to The Tequila Worm, by Viola Canales (2005), a group of students created posters in which they highlighted a response informed by ‘genetic criticism,’ thinking of the book as reflection of the author’s life and times, other groups highlighted formal criticism, transactional perspective or critical perspective and some students decided to respond using all of the above perspectives. The following two posters illustrate some of these perspectives:
However, one of the students’ responses that reveals in powerful ways their engagement with the literature is when they respond through the creation of their own work of literature. There are always students in my class who want to create their own picturebook inspired by the work of Latino authors studied in the class or their own literary response to a novel, as Bojana did in her response to Before We Were Free by Julia Alvarez (2002). She, who had also experienced a war, responded to the historical novel with the composition of an identity poem published in Fránquiz, Martínez-Roldán, & Mercado (2010):
Inspiration
I am not a white, middle class, female,
in a dominant culture of the USA.
I am a “Woman of the World”!
My roots that of indigenous mother, with my own culture,
language, art, and ancestry.
I have my own folk tales and idols – a full coffin without the lid;
my own experiences of discrimination and religious separation,
in fact, I drag the whole civil war behind my feet.
I carry this culture’s class division, imposed on my mother and father,
but don’t underestimate the power of my nation,
and ability to move through the freedom of expression.
I am a child of the world. I demand a proper position!
No piece of flesh will dumb me down.
I move through my own literary expression,
reminded to always fly up high like the butterflies.
By Bojana Djukovic-Barakovic
Having experienced the literature in these ways have supported the teacher candidates in their efforts to mediate literature with their children, with those who may feel closer to the groups represented in the books and with those children who may feel more distant. I look forward to keeping being surprised and transformed by the literature and by my students’ responses to it.
References:
Alvarez, J. (2002). Before We Were Free. New York, NY: Dell-Laurel-Leaf.
Canales, V. (2005). The Tequila Worm. New York, NY: Wendy Lamb Books.
Fránquiz, M., Martínez-Roldán, C. I., & Mercado, C. (2010). Teaching Latina/o children’s literature in multicultural contexts: Theoretical and pedagogical possibilities. In S. Wolf, K. Coats, P. Enciso, & C. Jenkins (Eds.), Handbook of research on children’s and young adult literature (pp. 108-120). New York & London: Taylor & Francis and Routledge.
Wolf, S. A. (2004). Interpreting literature with children. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
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- Themes: Carmen M. Martínez-Roldán, Teacher Candidates
- Descriptors: Debates & Trends, Student Connections, WOW Currents