Module 3:

I have found through my life, my teaching experiences, and just watching our world unfold on the news that it is so difficult for so many to understand the perspective of others. To understand what other people in the world are going through. It is so easy to close the doors on the world around us and only perceive the problems of the world as the ones that impact us. I think when teaching young readers it is so important to focus on point of view and perspective. Not just teaching first, second, and third person, but to really put yourself in their shoes. "You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view...until you climb into his skin and walk around in it" (Gordon et al, 2000, p.8).

While reading chapters 1 and 2 of Becoming (Other)Wise: Enhancing Critical Reading Perspectives I found that the authors find that it is very important to teach our students the skill of understanding different points of view outside our own. "I began to perceive a need for students to empathize with a wide range of characters, not just to accept or deny what they felt were the 'rights' or 'wrongs' of a character's life. I felt that to truly accomplish this, I had to try to create an environment in which students were able to project themselves into aspects of a character's life, and to ultimately tell the life of the character as testimony" (Gordon et al, 2000, p.8). Many students when reading have a difficult time distinguishing between an individual's perspective and the assumed perspective of an entire group of people. But if we teach our students how to understand other people's stories and why they need to know how to do this then we will be doing our job as their educators. Reading these multicultural texts isn't just about reading them, it is about responding to them in mature ways. "We've found that students often enter the narrative space of fiction expecting the world to be different from their own, but these expectations do not always ease feelings of resistance, dissonance, or outright hostility when exposed to very different values and beliefs. Reading about other cultures can be likened to walking into an unfamiliar world, one that challenges preconceived judgments about the ways things are or ought to be" (Gordon et alVinz, 2000, p.49). These ideas of teaching our students about the importance of understanding perspectives other than our own is so important especially when they are at this young influential age.

Issues of race, gender, and class are all led by institutional forces. Using multicultural literature in the classroom can be very difficult for those not from that culture to understand why they need to read it. "By participating in activities such as these, students may learn to be engaged with multicultural literature in ways that lead them to deconstruct their own white perspective of privilege that underlies much of their resistance to reading multicultural literature" (Beach, 1997, p.91). Instead of just reacting to a text we need our students to learn how to respond to these different types of text. "Central to this transformation is an awareness of how one's own ideological stance shapes the meaning of one's experience with literature" (Beach, 1997, p.83). We also need our students to understand that the way that they see things whether through a male perspective, an African American perspective, or a middle class perspective is going to influence the way you view literature. You have to be able to take your opinions and perspective out of the equation to truly understand multicultural literature and the lives of other people.

This book instantly reminded me of Lizzie McGuire. If you love a book that is real, funny, and full of life experiences from the perspective of a Mexican American teenager then this is a story for you. This book shows you a realistic version of what teens go through on a day to day basis. This would be a great book to use in a classroom setting to help students understand how to put themselves in another person's shoes. Since this is written like a diary you read it as if you wrote it. You see everything going on inside her head, all of her feelings, and the most important parts of her day that she wants to tell us about. You feel so sad for her at times, but then so excited for her at other times. I highly recommend this multicultural YA text to teachers who want to bring another perspective into the classroom to begin to teach your students how to understand that seeing what other people go through and understanding how to empathize with them in our world is so important especially if we want to bridge the gaps between our races, genders, and classes.

References:

Gordon, E., Hamilton, G., LaMontagne, J., Lindgren, B., & Vinz, R. (2000) Becoming (Other)Wise: Enhancing Critical Reading Perspectives. Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Heinemann.

Quintero, I. (2014) Gabi, A Girl in Pieces. El Paso, Texas: Cinco Puntos Press.

Rogers, T. & Soter, A. O. (1997) Reading Across Cultures: Teaching Literature in a Diverse Society. New York, New York: Teachers College Press.