How Tía Lola Learned to Teach By: Julia Alvarez

Tia Lola's niece and nephew's elementary school ask her to be a teacher and she doesn't think she is good enough to be a teacher.  She ends up becoming a volunteer teacher of Spanish in a Vermont Elementary school. A big theme is if she can get used to being a teacher gaining her own confidence and if she can have her nephew okay with her her being there.  A huge topic in the book is the prejudice within the Vermont school system.

Some teaching strategies

A couple of teaching strategies that can be used for teaching Hispanic Americans include:
1. Avoid segregating students into their culture group and don't allow them to do so either.
This enforces the idea of community in the classroom.  When we have students more integrated into a community we see everyone working with each other getting the tasks assigned done.  We also find that there is less in the way of segregation and some biases are resolved.

2. Offer more hands on activities.
With more hands on stuff all the students are learning to do the same thing and those Hispanic Americans that don't know quite so much English and have a harder time learning through lectures would be able to learn through example of other students.  This allows all students to have the same learning experience with out as much of a learning barrier.

Baseball in April By: Gary Soto

              This book is a collection of eleven short stories focusing on the everyday adventures of Hispanic young people growing up in Fresno, California. Gary Soto brings to life the joys and pains of young people everywhere. The smart, tough, vulnerable kids in these stories are Latino, but their dreams and desires belong to all of us.