When Students Become the Teachers

It seems to me that the content of Yu Ren Dong's article "Bridging the Cultural Gap by Teaching Multicultural Literature" applies mostly to Esperanza Rising, if we are considering the books we have read thus far.

My reasoning is this: Dong's article, like the article we had read previously, conveys the importance of the teacher not only instructing students in the way of multicultural literature, but also opening up themselves to make room for their own learning. The students in Dong's course learned that the best way to teach such literature was to strip away a reader-response attitude, so that students did not merely discuss what they had read in terms of their own individual perspectives. Instead, they agreed that a cultural-response discussion was best. Students should read in terms of the separate cultures conveyed in the book. However, the teacher or facilitator of the discussion might not always know about the cultural at hand. Sometimes, it might be more than beneficial to reach out to a minority student who might better understand, and might be able to explain more thoroughly what the characters in the book are experiencing. Thus, the student becomes the teacher.

I think that it would be difficult for a minority student to inform a class on the struggles of the African slaves, as in Copper Sun. While it is more than beneficial for the students to reach out and attempt to understand Amari's cultural, I don't think that any of the students or the teacher, if he or she is a minority, could give first hand experience. Harry Potter and Twilight are excluded from such discussions; we could claim that wizards and vampires are different cultures, but my bet is that no one has any experience on that either, and the only cultural lessons that could be taught are those of tolerance.

However, I do believe that a lot could be learned from Esperanza Rising. While the story takes place during the Great Depression, many minority students could probably contribute to Esperanza's perspective, especially if they had immigrated themselves. In today's America, Mexicans are quickly building up our population, and it is very likely that many immigrants or children of immigrants are present in most of today's classrooms. By teaching Esperanza Rising, teachers are not only providing a stretch away from the same old European-American literature for the minority students, but are giving these students a chance to teach their fellow classmates.