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Mx. Helton’s Classroom Edit display name

  • Fairfax High School
  • Los Angeles, CA
  • More than half of students from low‑income households

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Elizabeth Acevedo's "The Poet X" is the centerpiece of this unit, focused on the lives of Latinx teenagers living in major cities, like most of the students who populate my classroom. A brilliant testament to the power of poetry in a young person's life, this poetic Spanglish narrative follows the life of Xiomara Baptista. A young woman living in Harlem, Xiomara attempts to make sense of her place in her family and neighborhood through slam poetry. "The Poet X," and the other novels in this unit, center the experiences of Latinx young people, and will serve as the proving grounds for our classroom conversations about identity, family, language, and (re)legtimizing the lived experiences of my students, who so rarely see themselves represented in the texts deemed worthy of study in English class. They are stories about finding one's voice in a world that makes every effort to silence it. The majority of my students reported on the first few days of school their dislike of reading, disclosing everything from a general wariness of reading to outright disdain and fear--and justifiably so. It only takes a cursory glance at the hashtag #OwnVoices to ascertain the impact that reading narratives representative of one's own experience has on the heart and intellect of a young person (or any of us!). To not only enjoy reading, but to find our way in the world, we must have access to stories in which we see ourselves reflected and represented. I hope that reading these books--both as a whole class and in book clubs--will lay the groundwork for a year ahead in English class that, as one of my students wrote in his hopes for this year, "makes him feel like he actually matters."

About my class

Elizabeth Acevedo's "The Poet X" is the centerpiece of this unit, focused on the lives of Latinx teenagers living in major cities, like most of the students who populate my classroom. A brilliant testament to the power of poetry in a young person's life, this poetic Spanglish narrative follows the life of Xiomara Baptista. A young woman living in Harlem, Xiomara attempts to make sense of her place in her family and neighborhood through slam poetry. "The Poet X," and the other novels in this unit, center the experiences of Latinx young people, and will serve as the proving grounds for our classroom conversations about identity, family, language, and (re)legtimizing the lived experiences of my students, who so rarely see themselves represented in the texts deemed worthy of study in English class. They are stories about finding one's voice in a world that makes every effort to silence it. The majority of my students reported on the first few days of school their dislike of reading, disclosing everything from a general wariness of reading to outright disdain and fear--and justifiably so. It only takes a cursory glance at the hashtag #OwnVoices to ascertain the impact that reading narratives representative of one's own experience has on the heart and intellect of a young person (or any of us!). To not only enjoy reading, but to find our way in the world, we must have access to stories in which we see ourselves reflected and represented. I hope that reading these books--both as a whole class and in book clubs--will lay the groundwork for a year ahead in English class that, as one of my students wrote in his hopes for this year, "makes him feel like he actually matters."

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About my class

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