The author shares his experiences teaching a unit based on the Broadway musical "In the Heights" as a way of engaging the cultural identity of his students, mainly Dominican Americans. The unit he created around the musical was initially built in an effort to make Dominican culture overt in the classroom, fulfilling pedagogical ideas about multiculturalism and the need for students to see themselves reflected in the curriculum. In the end, the unit had as much of an impact on him as a teacher as it did on them as students. He learned much about his students as a result, enabling him to "connect with them as people but also to encourage their specific needs as students, thinkers, and writers." (Contains 2 notes.)