Carolyn L. Streets
The House on Mango Street is cemented within the canon of adolescent literature. It is required reading in several school districts and widely taught in many middle and high school ELA classrooms. The novel’s literary elements such as theme, symbolism, and figurative language in combination with vignette writing in the author’s style, makes this novel a popular choice among ELA teachers. To meet reading and writing standards in my middle school classroom, novel study on the House on Mango Street was approached using traditional English Language Arts strategies. As I was developing this unit, questions arose about how instructional moves could build pathways for students to critique and raise questions about issues of race, racism, and power within a culturally affirming context. The goal is for students to understand how the main character orients herself within systems of power, and for students to uncover any insights they may gain through this examination. While working on this unit, I wondered how I would create a remixed lesson that produced alternative ways to address what already exists within my classroom’s novel study. I also wondered how I could apply culturally responsive teaching to help students, like the main character, to understand the importance of their voices and perspectives. Culturally relevant pedagogy values and uses the characteristics, experience, and perspectives of ethnically diverse students to frame pedagogy and attitudes. Therefore, developing instructional approaches that affirmed students’ cultural identities and experiences and valued class discussions, student input and observations, required much thought.