Barb Trevino

Minority Literature in the Middle Grade Classroom

As a seventh grade teacher, I am keenly aware of the need to introduce students in the middle grades to a variety of diverse literature. For the purpose of this post, middle grades will include 6^th-8^th grade. I am also aware of the barriers present that may hinder an educator’s efforts to provide this diversity. As I have become more cognizant to my personal approach in choosing the literature I expose my students to I have noticed how little minority literature is taught in the middle grades classroom. When diversity is discussed it is often in the form of multicultural literature that is written by authors from other countries instead of by authors of minority populations within the United States.  It was after a discussion led by Dr. White at the beginning of the semester regarding the difference between immigrant and minority literature that I was able to relate the difference to multicultural and minority literature. Once this was brought to my attention, I became determined to acquaint my mostly minority students with good literature written by authors of minority populations in the United States. Although my students may have been familiar with some authors such as Walter Dean Meyers from their own independent reading, I wanted to use minority authors, particularly of novels, for whole and small group instruction because reading for pleasure is very different than reading for academic purposes.  To accomplish my goal, I wanted to find out which minority authors were currently being taught in middle grade classrooms and how accessible were resources to use these novels for novel studies.

            My first step in my journey to develop a curriculum rich in literature written by minority authors was to seek out professional peers that I noticed using a broad selection of authors. My search led me to my Language Arts department head and my teaching partner. The reason I chose these educators was because of their extensive teaching experience, in depth knowledge of juvenile and young adult fiction, and innovative teaching philosophies. After informing them of my intentions, they excitedly started listing award winning authors such as Sharon Flacke, Walter Dean Myers, Christopher Paul Curtis, Lawrence Yep, . While I was familiar with some such as Flacke and Myers, the others were new to me.   

            After arming myself with a whole new list of authors to explore, I decided to search the internet for additional information and book titles of some of these authors, and to see what if any resources are available to teach these authors in my classroom. Listed below is a brief introduction to these authors and the resources I was able to find:

Sharon Flake-an African American author who writes realistic fiction for young adults. Most of her books take place in urban areas and depict real issues teens face such as poverty, drugs, violence, and racial tensions. This website offers awesome lesson plans for all of her six books, http://www.sharongflake.com/_uploads/pdfs/flake-discussion.pdf.

Walter Dean Meyers- an African American author who is truly a jack of all trades. From his biography of Ida B. Wells to his rap/poem/ novel Amiri and Odette Myers’ stories are enthralling to readers of all ages. Myers stated at a luncheon I attended, that he uses his personal experience with poor, imprisoned, and disenfranchised teens to develop tales that seem to speak directly to young adults. Myers is great to recommend to students who normally would not pick up a book or have never finished a novel. The website, Web English teacher at http://www.webenglishteacher.com/myers.html provides links to lesson plans for all of his stories and novels.

Christopher Paul Curtis-  an African American author with several Newberry and other young adult awards. He writes historical and realistic fiction novels for young adults. Most of his books are targeted to the upper-elementary grades because of the reading level and vocabulary. However, because of the content that appeals to all ages these books are awesome for struggling readers in the middle grades. Christopher’s official website has a link to a Random House site for teachers with lesson plans for his two most popular books, The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963 and Bud, Not Buddy. While many other websites offered lesson plans on those novels, I was unable to find any on his other novels.

Lawrence Yep-a Chinese American award winning author of realistic fiction, historical fiction, and fantasy, whose stories appeal to adolescents because of the commonalities they find within the characters of his novels. www.litplans.com, www.webenglishteacher.com, and www.scholastic.com provide free lessonplans to use with several of Yep’s books. 

            As I looked over my list, I was surprised to see that there were no Latino or American Indian authors. I remembered that Pat Mora and was also a young adult author and tried to find lessons to be used for her novels. While I found several ideas for her poetry, I was disappointed to not find any lessons for her novels. After a search for Latino authors, I found several sights that provided lists of notable authors, but very few that offered instructions to implement the use of these novels in class. Furthering my search to include American Indian authors was even more disconcerting because while there was a variety of books written for elementary students including Erdrich, there was very scant choice in novels for the middle grades and little resources for lessons on American Indian literature.  

            Upon conclusion of my research, I found it very disconcerting to see how underutilized minority authors are in the classroom. While it is not uncommon to see novels written by African American authors used for novel studies in the middle grades, it is still not utilized as much as it should be. In addition, while you may find some high school classes using books written by Latino authors such as Sandra Cisneros or Isabelle Allende, it not common to find Latino authors utilized in middle grade classrooms. It is even less common to find Asian American, American Indian or any other minority authors used for novel studies in the middle grades as well. Knowing this information will make me more cognizant to include minority authors in my classroom regardless of the lack of resources on teaching these novels. I plan to be more creative and develop lessons to use these novels that I will share with other educators. I am also hopeful that because I loop with my students, meaning I teach the same students from 6^th through 8^th grade, I will be able to expose them to a wide variety of minority authors that will hopefully gain their attention leading to a more diverse reading palette.