Two Kinds

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

What is the American Dream? How does one achieve it or measure its success or failure? In what ways does it apply to immigration? Is it a realistic goal, or a myth?

Teaching Suggestion: Encourage students to consider how race, capitalism, and democracy factor into the definition.

• “What Is the American Dream? Examples and How to Measure It” by Adam Barone discusses the origin and power of the American Dream.
• “The Original Meanings of the ‘American Dream’ and ‘America First’ Were Starkly Different from How We Use Them Today” by Anna Diamond examines the phrase’s etymology.

Short Activity

“I, Too” by Langston Hughes considers the accessibility of the American Dream. Read the poem and brainstorm in your notes a list of words and phrases that come to mind in connection to the speaker’s tone, mood, and ideas.

Teaching Suggestion: Ask students to think of a group or organization they would have liked to belong to but have been excluded from. Then, have them model Hughes’s poem with their own topics. This example might be shared with students to inspire thinking:

I, too, sing cheers.

I am the less coordinated sister.

They send me back to the locker room

When the game starts,

But I jump,

And shout,

And grow strong…

• This brief biographical article from the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture offers background on the poet.

Differentiation Suggestion: Students who tend toward more concrete thinking might benefit from being supplied with full poetry frames.

Personal Connection Prompt

This prompt can be used for in-class discussion, exploratory free-writing, or reflection homework before reading the story.

What expectations have your parents or guardians had of you? Do you find these expectations burdensome or uplifting? In what ways have you met or failed to meet these expectations? What have been the reactions of your parents or guardians to these successes or failures? How have you felt about their reactions?

Teaching Suggestion: Prompt student thinking with questions: How do your parents or guardians expect you to perform in school—secondary and post-secondary? In sports, clubs, or other extra-curricular activities? What dating behaviors do your parents or guardians expect? Religious behaviors?

• “The Key to a Good Parent-Child Relationship? Low Expectations” by Arthur C. Brooks discusses the damaging results of high expectations.
• “Intergenerational Cultural Dissonance, Parent-Child Conflict and Bonding, and Youth Problem Behaviors Among Vietnamese and Cambodian Immigrant Families” by Yoonsun Choi et al. is a scholarly article that discusses the influence of immigration on parent-child relationships.

Differentiation Suggestion: English language learners might benefit from using sentence frames such as: My (mom, dad, guardian) expects me to _____, (and, but) I feel _____ because _____.