ESL Classes: Native American Materials
Native American Literature and ESL Students' Writing

The beauty of the written word can be extremely inspiring to ESL students in prompting them to write their own stories, to take risks, to explore new ways of saying things, to enlarge their vocabulary of descriptive words and to move away from an obsession with grammar toward more fluid writing.

ESL students have incredibly interesting, sad, moving and beautiful stories to tell, and one of the greatest gifts an ESL teacher can give to his or her students is the confidence to tell their stories and find pride in their work. The Way to Rainy Mountain by N. Scott Momaday and Storyteller by Leslie Marmon Silko are both good resources for stories that are beautiful in their simplicity and language, short, not too complicated, and capable of inspiring an ESL student to think, "I could write something like that."

Poetry is another avenue that seems to truly inspire some ESL students. The freedom to put images together without the constraints of sentence structure can be quite appealing. The traditional Native American attachment to nature, to tradition, to ancestors and family all have a universal appeal, and the fit between an ESL student's writing and selected examples of Native American literature seems to be a good one. Below are some materials that I have gathered from various sources.

The circle theme is found throughout Native American literature. Some materials for this theme:

• "The Circle" by Nancy Wood. Published in Spirit Walker, Doubleday.
• "Roundness of Life," from "Butterfly of Hope" by Ray Baldwin Louis. In Child of the Hogan, Brigham Young University Press.
• "The Dust Will Settle" by Luci Tapahonso, in Literature and Integrated Studies, Scott Foresman.

The poem "The Circle" by Nancy Wood can be used to allow students to create their own poem by using the form of the original poem. I first used this device with a work by Langston Hughes. Some of the students' work from that exercise appeared in the International Voice, and students came away feeling empowered and successful. Although Nancy Wood isn't Native American, the poem shows a sensitivity and respect for the Native idea of a circle. Additionally, the poem lends itself very well to this particular exercise, and it's not easy to find such poems.

The following selections can show ESL students different ways of approaching the same subject:

• "A Great Hunter"
• "Giving to the Deer"

• "In the fall, the Laguna hunters go to the hills . . ."
• "Deer Song"