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This section contains ideas and prompts for low and high stake written assignments, group activities and suggested field trips. We would like to update this page during the 2002-2003 academic year, so check back often for new teaching ideas. As the year continues, we hope that you will e-mail us your creative uses of the book. We will add your ideas for assignments, group activities, and field trips here, to this page. WRITTEN ASSIGNMENTS Consider the following prompts as starting points for creating your own low and high stakes writing assignments. Low Stakes Assignments: Ask students to pretend to be Santiago and write a series of letters to Tata in New York and then, later, to Papi in Puerto Rico. In these letters, the students should explain "the family news" based on their reading assignments. Ask students to pretend to be Santiago and keep a diary of her daily activities. Assign them a certain number of entries, stretched over the duration of the events in the book, and have them creatively record their "experiences" based on what they've read. As a class, visit the Photographs of Puerto Rico and Photographs of Brooklyn section of this web site. Ask students to write a short compare/contrast response to viewing the photographs. Have students study the cover of When I Was Puerto Rican. Have them design book covers for their memoirs and explain what images they chose and why. Ask students to keep a critical response journal for each chapter of When I Was Puerto Rican in which they identify and analyze the significant themes. High Stakes Assignments: You may want to develop a semester-long, staged research project for your students based on issues related to the book. Some research project topics might include: a comparative study of Puerto Rico today and Puerto Rico in the 1950s; a comparative study of Puerto Rico and the United States today; a historical study of Puerto Rican immigration to the United States; a comparative study of the colonial practices of the United States in Puerto Rico and the colonial practices of England in India (or any other pair of countries sharing a colonial relationship); an overview of the role of the United States in Puerto Rico in the 1940s and 1950s; a study of the roles of women in Puerto Rican culture; a comparative study of single mothers in the United States and single mothers in Puerto Rico; a historical study of the jíbaro culture in Puerto Rico. Ask students to read and compare another coming-of-age memoir like Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior or James McBride's The Color of Water to When I Was Puerto Rican. Ask students to conduct oral interviews with family members on their families' histories in New York City. Assign students a neighborhood in New York City. Ask students to create a research project, including a site visit (and perhaps a photographic rendering of the site visit) about the neighborhood and changes in the neighborhood over a 40 or 50 year period. Have students identify a significant subject position in their lives. Based on this position, ask students to write a "When I Was..." paper in which they explore their position and the ways in which this position changed based on interactions with others. Have students write their own short memoirs or creative essays. As a class, take a field trip and then ask students to write a reaction to a field trip GROUP ACTIVITIES Santiago's text offers many different ways to encourage students to interact in productive, collaborative learning. Feel free to modify these activities to meet your own educational goals. Class time line of historical events related to the book. Break the class into groups and assign each group a particular historical period (for example, each group might be responsible for a period of 10 or 15 years). The students will be responsible for a combination of library and Internet research to create a clear and detailed explanation of the historical events in their period. Photographic Interpretation of a scene in the book (adapted from an exercise developed by Dr. Eva Tettenborn of Binghamton University): Break your class into groups. Give each group a disposable, 12-shot camera. Ask students to create a series of tableaus in which they act out a scene, or series of scenes, in the book. Develop the photographs and ask students to create a poster, book, or other formal manner of presenting the photographs to the rest of the class. Develop a class unit on the jíbaro, including information on the culture and music. Bring jíbaro music into class for the students to hear. Then, ask students, in groups to respond to Santiago's romanticization of the jíbaro culture. Ask groups to write a contemporary, Nuyorican song reflecting jíbaro roots. Santiago spends much time discussing differences between groups, particularly based on her observations of different students in Brooklyn. Consider spending 1 day of class constructing an exercise around the idea of difference to encourage students to think more about encountering different cultures and the ways in which "difference" can be experienced, discussed, theorized, and analyzed (a number of these exercises are listed in resources on teaching multiculturalism. One particularly useful exercise, which takes about 3 hours, is the BaFá BaFá exercise used by anthropologists). Explore the tourist industry of Puerto Rico as a class. Encourage students to bring in brochures and promotional materials about the culture. Discuss the way Puerto Rico is "sold" as a tourist destination for people living in the United States. Then, assign groups to research contemporary Puerto Rico and significant issues in contemporary Puerto Rican life. How does this view of the island compare with the materials promoting the island as a tourist destination? What are the points of disjuncture between the tourist industry and lived life on the island? Based on the "When I Was..." project above, consider formalizing the class projects by creating a class anthology or a class video in which students present their "When I Was..." projects. Ask small groups to create interview questions that they would like to ask Santiago. Then, have groups exchange questions and try to answer them through further research. Ask groups to prepare a reading of significant scenes in When I Was Puerto Rican. Consider asking students, as a class, to stage a mini-production of a chapter in Santiago's When I Was Puerto Rican. Working in small groups, assign students to "find" images connected to When I Was Puerto Rican in magazines and on-line. Have groups prepare collages of When I Was Puerto Rican. FIELD TRIPS Taking students to one of the following sites may enhance your course through experiential education, connecting When I Was Puerto Rican to the city and its many resources. As with any field trip, you will want to coordinate your visit directly with the site at a mutually convenient time. Association for Puerto Rican-Hispanic Culture, Inc Ballet Hispánico
Hispanic Society of America
Hostos Center
for the Arts and Culture Hunter College Puerto
Rican Studies Center Library Instituto
Cervantes INTAR
Hispanic American Arts Center King Juan Carlos
I of Spain Center, New York University El Museo del Barrio **Please note that El Museo del Barrio has a special, long-term exhibit on the Taíno that would be helpful for students in understanding Puerto Rican history. Nuyorican Poets Cafe Pregones Theatre Puerto Rican Travelling Theatre Co., Inc Thalia
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