by Julia López-Robertson, Amanda Dunnigan, and Rebecca Martin, The University of South Carolina
“ . . . it has to begin with acceptance and by honoring people’s cultural practices; way of life, language and belief systems— even if one doesn’t fully understand it.”
Set in San Antonio, Texas, Going, Going by Naomi Shihab Nye follows the main character, Florrie, a teenager as she begins a grassroots campaign to protest the loss of local business to large corporations. Having worked in her mother’s restaurant as long as she could remember, Florrie understood the importance of supporting local businesses. My students connected Florrie’s struggle to maintain the local in San Antonio to maintaining our own students’ language and culture. Continue reading
Yang stresses the importance of being who you truly are and nothing less. As teachers it is our duty to create a classroom environment in which our students can feel free and comfortable being themselves.
In the theory of “suspension of disbelief” as suggested by British poet and philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge, it is the storyteller or author who must spin such a compelling tale that the listener/reader will accept a fantasy as a plausible reality. In 