The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
"I have inherited her name, but I don't want to inherit her place by the window."
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The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros: Of all of the novels that I taught in my 33 years of teaching - The House on Mango Street is the one that got moved around (in terms of when it was taught during the school year). At first, I would teach it at the beginning of the year - then the middle - and finally it ended up at the very end. One of the reasons that it ended up at the end of the year, was purely logistical. In May, students would be taking their AP Tests (and students at my school had a lot of them) - so I needed a book with very short readings - and a lot of work (ie group works) that students could do on their own.
It also made sense to teach this book towards the end of the year given its subject matter. My class was composed primarily of seniors and the vast majority of them would be going away to college. The House on Mango Street is a book about leaving home, and it's a book about first rejecting where you come from - so that you can come back home and claim it for your own. It's also about finding your path - the thing that you do well - in Esperanza's case, it's writing. In the case of my students it was 25-32 unique journeys that they would soon begin.
The House on Mango Street Bookmark with Reading Schedule: (Docx PDF) This bookmark is a little different than the ones I usually give my students. The readings are so small, the book so short, and I really want them to try and find Esperanza's House (see the first lesson). So on the first side are the readings and due dates, on the other side is a small chart where they can write in what they think the "House" is for each of the chapters.
Actually, 11 poems, 1 song, and many quotes. There are many themes and ideas in this gem of a book - and I wanted to introduce as many of them as possible in the verse that we would go over today. The fact that the unit is less than two weeks and never - unlike most of the books that I taught in World Literature, accompanied by a film. So planting some ideas of what this novel could be about is largely accomplished in today's poetry class. I also tried to find - in addition to thematically linked poems - poems that were written by or about women. The approach is the same of most of our poems before classes. The students get with a partner or trio and quickly take a look at the poem - then we come back to read the poem aloud and tell us what they thought it meant. We read the quotes and listen to the song together.
Though I have included a Group Work for this lessson - I urge you go ahead with a Class Discussion. I may have been gone that day or we may have been plagued with so many absences due to AP Testing that I made a Group Work. To have an opening discussion when more than a few students are absent was, to me, a not worthwhile task. In any case, in our discussion we cover all the chapters through page 32. As always, the students have done the reading for homework - and this time - they are happy to discover that the reading takes (generally) less than 20 minutes. In addition to talking about what happens in each of these vignettes (this is a Ring Master Teacher type discussion as most opening (and closing) classes are), we also talk about what the "house" (ideal desire for Esperanza or other characters) is for each Chapter.
After a great opening discussion, it's important to set the students loose on their own (well, kind of on their own - group works have very pointed questions designed to take students in a certain direction - though the only thing that I really cared about was that they answer the question and back it up with text from the novel). Because we have so little time on this novel, this group work covers a lot of ground: from "Darius in the Clouds" through "Hips". And like the wonderful discover of Esperanza getting older that we glimpse in "Hips", everything is changing fast - and yet, she is just learning to discover what is she really wants.
Somewhere, someplace there must be Discussion Notes for a teacher-led (Ringmaster Teacher) type discussion or (perhaps, more likely) - the notes for the discussion are contained with the pages of the book with my overlaying notes. In any case, towards the end of my career (maybe as long as the last 10 years), I started covering these pages with a Vertext. And since this book is very much like a long, prose poem - the words are so beautiful - they are so succinct and powerful. Which means a Vertext makes even more sense.
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