Pen to Paper - The House on Mango Street, in-class essay

“When you start putting pen to paper, you see a side of your personal truth that doesn't otherwise reveal itself in conversation or thought.” Anthony Kiedis

Pen to Paper - An In-Class Essay for The House on Mango Street: This essay wasn't given after students started creating Illuminated Texts of the novel - and for good reason. An Illuminated Text, when properly done IS an essay of sorts. It uses the actual text to make a point - to give a unique perspective on a work. In fact, their is perhaps even more critical thinking going on as the student must also come up with their own focus rather than answering an assigned prompt. In this case, there are three different prompts that look at very different aspects of The House on Mango Street. The essay is designed to be completed in class in one period - which is actually great given teachers' weariness of AI and take home essays.

Lesson Overview

Here are the instructions from the Essay Handout (found below):

The Prompts:

Handouts

Most Recent Handouts

House on Mango Street - In Class Essay Docx PDF

What's Next & UNIT HOMEPAGE

Toni Morrison's The Song of Solomon:

WHAT CAME BEFORE:

Thoughts on the Lesson

Lesson Overview

Here are the instructions from the Essay Handout (found below):

You are to choose one of the following topics and write an essay (2-3 pages) on it. Whichever essay you choose to do, I very strongly recommend that you take a few minutes – come up with a thesis and write a short tentative outline. When time is limited, as it is during an in-class essay, an outline will help you save time and connect one thought to the next in a logical way.

The Prompts:

For a more complete description of the prompts - see the actual handout (found below). But here is a summary of each of the four prompts:

Esperanza's vision and longing for a "house" and how that changes throught the novel.
The expectations of women and the women characters in the novel.
Virginia Woolf's idea of women needing a "room of their own" in order to write and how this relates to Esperanza.

Does the novel take a negative look at men and males in its prose?

Handouts

Most Recent Handouts

House on Mango Street - In Class Essay Docx PDF

Again here are the instructions (for more on the essay see the above Lesson Overview)

You are to choose one of the following topics and write an essay (2-3 pages) on it. Whichever essay you choose to do, I very strongly recommend that you take a few minutes – come up with a thesis and write a short tentative outline. When time is limited, as it is during an in-class essay, an outline will help you save time and connect one thought to the next in a logical way.

What's Next & UNIT HOMEPAGE

Toni Morrison's The Song of Solomon:

I taught this book every year that I taught World Literature (which is all but one year of my teaching career). I can honestly say that it is my favorite novel that I ever used - BUT, it was not always so. When I first started teaching, I had taken over the class (Journalism/World Literature) from another teacher. I asked him for advice about which books to teach and Song of Solomon was one of his recommendations. Because the first year of teaching is so busy, so chaotic - I didn't have a chance to read the book in advance - and so, I found myself reading the book as my students were.

I was soon shocked to find that I absolutely hated the book - it made no sense to me and I felt very awkward as a white man teaching this book about the black experience. I vowed to never teach it again. Well - the second year of teaching was nearly as impossible as the first. We came to the end of the year - and I didn't have a book or the needed lessons developed and so I very reluctantly returned to Song of Solomon. To my complete and utter amazement - I loved it. I loved it and the students did too! It is a book that requires a second reading to really get the most out of it and blossomed for me. I also found that by giving the students enough structure and direction - I could get them to that joyous second reading - their first time around. The book is an absolute wonder.

WHAT CAME BEFORE:

Falling Paper - The House on Mango Street Illuminated Text Project

Thoughts on the Lesson

One reason that this essay was not done in the later years of my career has to do with the timing of this novel. Because it was done at the end of the year - as I've mentioned before, so many seniors were gone or taking AP tests. It was very hard to get an entire class together.