Sydney Mason Professor Titus Essay #1 7 April 2014 A Critique of Esperanza Rising Lesson Plans: Focus on ESL Student Learning The Educational field strongly supports incorporating multicultural content into the curriculum because of the variety of cultures in the United States today. Esperanza Rising is a popular choice for teachers because of the bilingual content and historical nature, as well; many students study the material for the immersion aspect. Esperanza Rising is a novel by Pam Muñoz Ryan set during the Great Depression. It examines the struggles of Mexican-American workers during the Great Depression while following a personal story of a child s experiences. Esperanza s experiences are stories that many students in an English as a Second Language (ESL) classroom can identify with. ESL teachers use Esperanza Rising as a teaching tool because of its historical content, use of language, and assortment of activities that can be created with the story line. Online, there are many Esperanza Rising lesson plans designed for ESL classrooms. I analyze and compare two lesson plans and note the variety of teaching strategies, activities, and assessments relevant for teaching ESL students. In addition, I link those to James Banks s four levels of a multicultural education. Lastly, I use my discoveries to design a day s lesson plan to teach an element from Esperanza Rising. With my findings and novel ideas, I suggest that Esperanza Rising is an ideal book for ESL students. James Banks, an advocate for multicultural education reform, wrote many books about how to incorporate cultural awareness in the classroom. The reading, Race, Culture, and Education: The Selected Works of James A. Banks contains one of his most influential notions,
The Four Approaches to Multicultural Curriculum Reform. These four approaches describe certain levels of multicultural involvement within a curriculum: The Contributions Approach, the Additive Approach, the Transformation Approach and the Social Action Approach. The Contributions Approach reflects the least amount of multicultural involvement in a curriculum. An example of this approach is when a school celebrates Black History Month. Teachers teach surface level information and scarcely incorporate relevant Black history lessons into the main curriculum. Banks s approaches gradually increase based on what, how, and how much multicultural content is implemented in the curriculum. Other examples that reflect Banks s multicultural curriculum notion are: Incorporating literature by people from diverse cultures in daily readings and changing the entire structure of the curriculum to inspire learners to have deeper cultural perspectives. The final level, which Banks suggests is the deepest approach, is the Social Action Approach. Here, the goal of the curriculum seeks social change. Students are taught with a multicultural angle and then act on their newfound understanding for change. For example, students might learn about the immigration laws today and study its impact on citizens and immigrants. Then the students would write to senators, congressmen, or newspaper editors to express their opinions regarding change. (Banks, 2006) The first lesson plan I selected is designed for a 7 th and 8 th grade ESL classroom. The classroom is a culturally diverse group with a majority of Mexican-Americans. A key piece to note, relevant for each classroom, is the importance in acknowledging each student s unique learning potential. In the lesson plan, this teacher recognizes each student s academic diversity. There are many parts of the lesson plan that allow for individual work and personalized assessments. Like many ESL classrooms, and as this lesson plan follows, the main objectives revolve around furthering language development and recognizing students ethnic history. In my
opinion, the teacher meets these objectives because of the relevant activities corresponding with the assigned book section. The most pertinent activities in the plan are; small group reading, personal journal entries relating to a specific theme, like happiness, and role-playing selected scenes. The teacher would be able to assess her students using alternative assessments like the journal and having students evaluate the role-playing. Personally, I advocate for peer evaluations. Peer evaluations allow learning for all students, not only the presenters. The evaluation would ask questions such as; did this activity help you visualize and/or internalize the scene? What did you learn from participating in this activity? Did you find this activity to be useful? Why? These activities would support an ESL student s learning because of the strong language focus within this lesson plan. (Minner, 2005) The second lesson plan is designed for a 4 th grade ESL classroom. The teacher who created this lesson plan notes a 90% Hispanic population in the classroom. She also mentions at the beginning of her plan is that she recommends notifying parents before beginning this unit, which I agree is extremely important. Students in the classroom may feel emotionally connected to the characters and events that occur. This can generate a very open and united environment, but it can also be complicated to address all thoughts and feelings in a correct manner. The main objectives are; discover and discuss the emotions that occur within the relocation of a family, define important vocabulary words necessary for the comprehension of the text, and orally read pieces from the text. These objects are quite different compared to the last lesson plan; there is more of a focus on final skills learned than on overarching development. The activities I found most appropriate, are; large group discussion about the theme of society and class represented and to artistically create a project that expresses Esperanza s changes from the beginning to the end of the novel. To assess student progress the teacher has each student discuss with their
family about what they learned, and what they took away from the unit. After the discussion, the family and the student create a memory book of their journey. This lesson plan supports ESL student development with a focus on oral language activities. (Costa, 2014) Both of these lesson plans have aspects of multiculturalism tied into the curriculum for their Esperanza Rising unit. Given Banks s The Four Approaches to Multicultural Curriculum Reform, I would place lesson plan one under the Additive Approach. The Additive Approach is when the curriculum incorporates some aspects of multiculturalism, but the lesson structure is not altered. This teacher incorporated a multicultural perspective by acknowledging each student s English proficiencies, but the lesson plan does not prepare students to acquire habits of being a cultured learner. In my opinion, a cultured learner has a desire to go out and make a change (the Social Action Approach) and furthermore, they must have the vocabulary to go out and do so. Lesson plan two has a more distinctive approach to a multicultural curriculum, thus I believe it should be placed in Banks s Transformation Approach. The key reason lesson plan one and lesson plan two are on different levels of multicultural education reform is because lesson plan two sought life long learning for students. Lesson plan two did a more advanced job at instilling desires for lifelong learning, like through the family memory book activity. Students took their learning outside of the classroom and applied events from Esperanza Rising to real life scenarios. In order to reach the Social Action Approach, I create a whole new lesson plan using a multicultural perspective. I chose the common element of relationships within the novel, Esperanza Rising to design my lesson plan around. In order to teach my students about this component, I came up with a list of objectives, a pedagogy approach, activities and an assessment strategy. My objectives are; Students should understand many types relationships in a variety of cultures, be
able to communicate examples of relationships, and define factors that contribute to the overall relationship. Here is my plan. Today we will have small group and then move to a large group discussion about the role of relationships presented in Esperanza Rising. A starter question for discussion would be: How would you go about describing a parent-child relationship within your home culture? Each student will have distinctive answers because one child s home life and culture is dissimilar from another. One student might talk about the parent-child relationship through the views of the dominate American culture, another student might talk about the relationship through their country of origin s culture, yet another student might have mixed views because of the multiple cultures represented in their home. Another question I would ask would be: What roles confirm the status and authority the parent figure has? Again, depending on the student s background, there will be varying answers. One student might talk about work roles, homemaking roles, or a role where the authority figure is represented by time spent worshiping a God. After a long discussion with other relevant questions, I will ask the students to pull out textual evidence from Esperanza Rising to support their opinion concerning these questions; Can there be other relationships besides an parent-child relationship? What other relationships could have the same effect as a parent-child relationship? Two pieces of evidence that might be brought up are from page 107 and page 184. The first quote reads, Esperanza, said Mama, you and Isabel will be watching the babies while the rest of us work [ ] But I want to work with you and Hortensia and Josefina! You re not old enough to work in the sheds, said Mama. (Ryan, 2000) This quote suggests that the working person is a factor of having the parent/authority role of the parent-child relationship. Another quote supports this idea with a twist.
Esperanza bent down close to Mama s ear. Don t worry, Mama. Remember, I will take care of everything. I am working and I can pay the bills. I love you. (2000) Again, the working person is represented as a factor of having the parent/authority role of the parent-child relationship, but the person who is working is not the parent in this scenario, but the child. I would follow up by asking the students if those quotes change any opinions regarding who has the authority of that given relationship? Like before, I would receive different responses depending on their ethnic background and beliefs. The factor of work might be a stronger factor in some cultures and not as important in others. To conclude the day s unit, I would assign homework to the students. 1.) Choose any type of relationship discussed in class (i.e., Parentchild relationship), 2.) Try flip-flopping the authority of the relationship- appropriately! 3.) Write a page essay about which relationship you chose, why you chose it, and what factors contributed to you successfully (or unsuccessfully) changing the authority of the relationship. This homework assignment will allow me to individually assess my students and see how well each of them grasped this theme of the novel. Finally, to assess my lesson plan, I want to consider my objects, activities and the content discussed during class to analyze what level of multicultural reform I would be at. Within my three objectives, I feature culture as a strong component; this allows students to grasp other viewpoints. The idea that students can take away more than one outlook from the lesson and to consider other culture s views on the lesson is an example of the Social Action Approach. During the lesson, my pedagogical stance is for students to come away with connection skills, being able to connect their learning to the real world. The notion of connecting learning to the real world is another example of the Social Action Approach. Furthermore, during my assessment process, the essay component has students bring their knowledge out into the real world to make a change. The change piece is by far the strongest
and most essential component of the Social Action Approach. As a final analysis, because of my objectives, pedagogical stance and assessment process, my lesson plan is a good representation of Banks s multicultural reform. In conclusion, the reason Esperanza Rising is a popular choice for teachers to incorporate in their curriculum is because of the great multicultural content within the text. Educational reform today is moving towards having more multicultural content in schools, thus Esperanza Rising will continue to be a common choice among teachers. The lesson plans I analyzed had engaging segments, but their levels of multiculturalism were lower. I provided an example of what a higher-level of a multicultural curriculum would look like within the realm of the story, Esperanza Rising. Although the lesson plans found online were not accurate examples of a suitable multicultural lesson for ESL students, I provided one, which allows us to see that it is possible to have a successful lesson for ESL student using the bilingual content and historical nature inside Esperanza Rising.
Works Cited Costa, Cortney. "Esperanza Rising: Connecting Latino Students to Literature." Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Apr. 2014. Minner, Hayley. "Esperanza WCPS Lesson Plan." Salisbury University (2005): n. pag. Web Race, culture, and education: the selected works of James A. Banks, James A. Banks. Taylor and Francis (2006). Ryan, Pam Muñoz. Esperanza Rising. New York: Scholastic, 2000. Print.