Finding high-quality, Spanish/English, multicultural teaching materials is a challenging task. But American Sabor, an exhibit developed by the Smithsonian Museum, the Experience Music Project in Seattle and the University of Washington, fits these criteria. Through popular music, American Sabor chronicles the history and diversity of the post-World War II experiences of Latinos. A physical exhibit of American Sabor travels the United States while an online exhibit provides a wealth of videos, interviews, newspaper articles, maps and even a jukebox for anyone to enjoy the styles and sounds of Latino artists.
My teaching team and I used the online exhibit in our Spanish Language Arts class’s first-quarter unit on the diversity of Latinos and their contributions to the American cultural landscape. The exhibit’s resources added sabor (flavor) to our selected readings from Nacer bailando (Dancing Home), a bilingual novel by Latina author Alma Flor Ada.
Each week, our students studied a different U.S. city, rotating through thematic stations. Students listened to Latino-influenced music and interviews with musicians as a way to understand the historical context surrounding the themes from their readings. They analyzed vignettes from Nacer bailando (Dancing Home), making connections to the experiences of the characters and the musicians they researched.
In one rotation of this unit, students spent a week studying San Antonio as a cultural center. They listened to music that reflected the tejano identity—an identity espoused by many people of Mexican descent living in Texas. Ranchero music, corridos and conjuntos filled our classroom, and we read about influential tejano musicians, such as Eva Ybarra and Chucho Perales. Students discussed what made this music—and the musicians who created it—unique and compared and contrasted it with their personal lives and identities as Latinos.
To further enhance the theme of the tejano identity, we intersected the San Antonio study with the chapter “El mapa” (“The Map”) from Nacer bailando (Dancing Home). In this chapter, Ada presents the identities of the two main characters—Margie, a tejana, and her cousin, Lupe, a recent immigrant from México. By blending these two resources—the nonfiction, informational text from American Sabor and the fictional account of Lupe and Margie—students were able to develop meaningful connections and appreciate the tejano identity through their contributions to our cultural landscape.
As the final product of the unit, students developed a personal narrative about an element of their cultural identity in our city. Students shared their personal narratives with the rest of the class through cartoneras. Several students chose to develop narratives about an experience they had involving their names.
As Latinos, their stories revealed frustration with having their names constantly mispronounced or, worse yet, Americanized without their consent. One student wrote, “I get upset and anxious when someone calls me the wrong name.” He was very clear that even though his name looks “American,” it’s pronounced with a Spanish accent. Another student told the story of a guest teacher who inadvertently Americanized his name. Despite several corrections on behalf of the student, the teacher kept using the Americanized name. The student’s story ended with the statement, “I was so happy to see my regular teacher the next day.”
Other students wrote about their favorite cultural activity involving music. Two boys’ stories describe the hustle and bustle of their older sisters’ quinceañeras (elaborate coming-of-age parties for young ladies). From waking their sisters up on their big day, to getting themselves and other siblings ready, to going through the formalities of this wedding-like event, and finally being able to spend a little time with friends before returning home, these stories were so vivid that I felt I had been present at the quinceañeras.
Beginning the year with a personal narrative unit allowed me to get to know my students—personally and culturally. It also empowered them with a foundational knowledge of the diversity of Latinos in the United States, including their own valuable cultural contributions. Engaging with American Sabor set the stage for a yearlong process of building a more complex understanding of Latinos’ historic experience of struggle and achievement in the United States.
How might you use American Sabor for a multicultural exploration of history, language, literature and the performing arts in your classroom?
Berg is a middle school bilingual resource teacher in Madison, Wisconsin.
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