Alan Hidalgo Raw Video Series: Student Testimony on the BTW Anthology Novel 3

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The student in this video is referring to the novel entitled "People Skills." Below is a synopsis from the Table of Contents of Between Two Worlds: A Multicultural and Multilingual Anthology.

"Mike Nathan was a star the moment he set foot on his high school campus. As a freshman who stands six feet eight inches and weighs a solid 220 pounds, he is a recognized superstar in both football and basketball. Mike, partly due to his size, and partly due to his personality, is also a natural leader. Other students follow him
and most teachers fear him. He is known throughout the school as a young man who speaks his mind. When his science teacher, Mrs. Larson, dares to confront him, she introduces the concept of effective communication. What follows is both fascinating
and humorous as an experiment becomes an entirely new way of relating to people and taking on the many challenges associated with social interaction."

Many students at the high school and college level have found the ten novels that comprise the Between Two Worlds: A Multicultural and Multilingual Anthology to have had a deep and lasting positive impact on their lives. This is due to the life skills taught via the many high interest themes found in each novel (difficult family upbringing, navigating relationships as a young adult, gang violence, drugs, personal identity, MMA, culture, immigration, bullying, etc.) as well as the diverse cast of characters found in each novel (with settings ranging from California to Massachusetts to New Mexico to Texas to Indiana and origins ranging from immigration to the United States from Italy to Brazil and the Philippines to Nigeria and Mexico to Argentina and South Korea to Puerto Rico) and South America to the Middle East.

Students have also found the BTW Student Workbook to have greatly impacted their education as they have improved their ELA skills; namely, their ability to think critically and enter into higher order thinking, to apply moral reasoning, to cognitively analyze literature, and to write strong academic essay responses. This, in turn, naturally leads to improved grades in the classroom and increased test scores on standardized assessments.