"In an increasingly diverse society, an expanded literary canon empowers students who rarely see themselves reflected in the works they read, enlightens those who are seldom exposed to cultures other than their own, and more accurately represents the voices of America.
"The Standards for the English Language Arts articulate the importance of encouraging students to read a wide variety of multicultural literature. However, the ability of educators to teach it well is limited by a lack of familiarity with texts outside the traditional canon. In addition, many use a thematic pedagogical approach, which emphasizes similarities among cultures and ignores features that make a culture distinct.
"To provide educators with the much-needed resources to make multicultural literature meaningful to their students, Thirteen/WNET produced The Expanding Canon: Teaching Multicultural Literature in High School. This series of eight hour-long programs, supported by a comprehensive Web site and workshop guide, introduces educators to a rich variety of works beyond the traditional literary canon and to innovative teaching strategies appropriate to particular texts. Works featured include those by African American, Native American, Latino, and Asian American authors.
"The series features a geographic and ethnically diverse group of authors, teachers, and students. Classroom activities associated with four key pedagogical approaches include articulating personal responses by writing poetry, conducting community-based research that sheds light on a text's meaning, exploring a text's cultural and historical context, and answering an author's call to action. Integrated with the classroom footage is information on featured authors and analysis of their works by leading scholars, educators, and the authors themselves.
"The series is made widely available to educators free via the Annenberg/CPB satellite Channel, which uses media and telecommunications to advance excellent teaching in American schools.
"Cornell West lists four potential outcomes of carefully planned and competently executed literature instruction: expansion of the scope of empathy; a sense of history; courage by way of self-examination; a sense of hope. Although it is not possible to evaluate the impact of this recently completed project, our goal is that as more teachers learn to teach multicultural literature effectively, growing numbers of high school students will realize the outcomes West outlines."--2003 Peabody Awards entry form.
"In Part I, Cathie Wright-Lewis and her class explore the tradition of spoken word and the works of poet Abiodun Oyewole. In Part II, Sandra Childs's class studies the history of Japanese-American internment in the United States through the works of Lawson Fusao Inada. Inada reads his poetry to the students and addresses their questions."--episode description from Teacher Resources (http://www.learner.org/resources/series178.html#program_descriptions) accessed 2005-04-19.
The website contains tabs for each of the eight learning sections presented in the program. Each tab contains pages labeled "Theory Overview," "Lesson Plans," "Teaching Strategies," "Authors and Literary Works," and "Resources." Additional resources included in each of the eight learning sections include embedded videos, an interactive forum pertaining to different analyses of poems, a discussion board, and links to downloadable PDF guides.
Corporate Producers: WNET (Television station : New York, N.Y.) | Annenberg/CPB Channel
Persons Appearing: Lawson Fusao Inada (Guest) | Cathie Wright-Lewis (Guest instructor) | Sandra Childs (Guest instructor)
Broadcast Date: 2003
