Sep 26, 2019
“Coming to America: Representing An Unexplored Reality”, that’s the name of a book that features a compilation of essays written by teenagers who are English language learners. They are the students of Osceola High School English Language Arts teacher Manny Hernández and they all have something in common – they recently migrated with their families to the U.S. and share the angst of leaving their homeland and the hope of a new beginning. In this episode of I HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY, our guest Manny Hernández shares how he found his purpose in forming the “Coming to America Club” at his high school just a few years ago to help Latino youth excel despite the challenges they might face during their transition to the United States: “When I started my first semester, I found out that the most interesting unit for students in the Common Core program is called ‘Coming to America’. That unit is for eleventh-graders for English Language Arts. Some of the readings are ‘A Plymouth Plantation’, an essay regarding the Native Americans and the Salem witch trials. When we did the first one ‘A Plymouth Plantation’ regarding the hardships and tribulations of the first European settlers, the Puritans, what I do with that story is that I connect it with the students. I ask them, what are your hardships, what problems did you go through? That religious freedom that they were looking for, what were your parents looking for? So, I take the story of the Puritans and I make it their story.”