Literary Theory Meets 21st Century Urban Literatis

Celebrating Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month

This project is a part of the Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month celebration because it supports a Latino teacher or a school where the majority of students are Latino.

My Students

When literary theory meets canonical texts and then shakes hands with the 21st century critical thinkers with whom I am blessed to work, magic happens. My hope is that my students hold on to that magic through the end of their senior year and solidify a foundation in reading and literary theory.

My students are brilliant and loud 11th and 12th graders who are on the cusp of life after high school.

Oftentimes, despite the hope, they express a fear of success and a nervousness about how prepared they are for the future. At my school, we have a diverse community that is equal parts beautiful and violent. My students are diverse by culture and interests, but the majority share the common experience of living in poverty. Our school is unique in that it has wall-to-wall academy programs, so I see students from both the architecture & design pathway, as well as the ones going the media route. It is truly an enriched environment in which to teach English because the fundamental communication and presentation skills we learn in my class support the students' work in their linked learning classes as well.

My Project

The framework for the class requires the application of various critical theory lenses to all of the texts we study. Through the larger umbrella of social equity, the students analyze texts that include Richard Wright's Native Son and Shakespeare's Othello, which both have protagonists with whom my students share common skin and experiences. I have included a request for those novels. For the first six weeks of school, my students use multimedia and short stories to gain conceptual understanding of the following theories: reader response, feminism, Marxism, postcolonialism, and psychoanalysis. Part of what solidifies this knowledge is the students' expressing their understanding through art and publication to an authentic audience. For example, for one lens they complete "dream sketches" that each of their peers has to analyze using the framework of the lens questions. They publish work routinely to their blogs, and I would like to use the printer, with ink, as a resource to publish in print.

Donating to these awesome kids at my high school will guarantee donors excellent karma.

On a more serious note, these donations will provide my students with tools to master literacy skills that have them embracing, and not fearing, success and higher expectations.