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Making the Multicultural Connection
One day our descendants will think it incredible that we paid so much attention to things like the amount of melanin in our skin or the shape of our eyes or our gender instead of the unique identities of each of us as complex human beings.
Franklin Thomas
STRATEGY 1: Be sensitive to the diversity of todayâs classrooms.
What the Research Says
That todayâs schools are more diverse than ever is undeniable. According to the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics (1998), one in every three students currently attending primary or secondary schools is of a racial or ethnic minority. It is predicted that students of color will make up almost 50 percent of the U.S. school-age population by 2020 (Banks & Banks, 2001). The children born of the large influx of immigrants to the United States in the last several decades currently comprise approximately 20 percent of the children in America, providing a kaleidoscope of cultural and language differences to many classrooms (Dugger, 1998).
Cultural and language differences are only a part of the diversity in our schools. One in five children under the age of 18 years currently lives below the poverty line. The traditional two-parent family is becoming the minority. Less than half of Americaâs children currently live with both biological parents, with almost 60 percent of all students living in a single-parent household by the time they reach the age of 18 years (Salend, 2001). All of this is occurring at a time when schools are working toward mainstreaming and inclusion of nearly 11 percent of school-age children who are classified as disabled (U.S. Department of Education, 1995). Certainly the challenges in todayâs classrooms have never been greater. Many teacher preparation programs now include classes to help prepare future teachers for cross-cultural, inclusive instruction. Zeichner (1993) proposed that the key characteristics of these programs provide for the dynamics of prejudice and racism.
Classroom Applications
Even in todayâs society, some classrooms seem to be focusing on the âdifferencesâ and difficulties involved in multicultural education, rather than embracing these differences as enriching, desirable, inevitable, natural, and positive forces. Teachers must not only acknowledge the more obvious diversity issues such as color and physical disability, but also be aware of the cultural diversity of students and families. In selecting curriculum it is important to see if examples of diversity are represented. Are the visual examples only of whites? Are the holidays represented in literature only those celebrated by Christians? Are the needs and emotions of people with disabilities presented? When having a discussion of families, it is important to stress that not all family units are alike. When sending a note home to parents, it is better to have it addressed to the âparent or guardian ofâ instead of âmotherâ or âfather.â
A teacher once asked her students to describe their bedrooms and draw pictures of them. What this teacher didnât realize was that several students did not have their own bedrooms but shared the room with four or five other siblings. Disclosing this information to the class by reading the story and showing the drawing might be embarrassing for the students. By the same token, all teachers must be especially aware of district and state education codes with regard to celebrating religious holidays in the classroom. What about the student who doesnât celebrate Christian or Jewish holidays? Rather than ask a student to write a story about his or her favorite Christmas memory, the teacher might assign students to write about a favorite family tradition.
One question teachers should ask themselves is, âCould this question, example, or assignment make a student feel uncomfortable with regard to his or her race, religion, ethnicity, or cultural background?â Designing a richly diverse curriculum does not have to be difficult, it simply takes thought and consideration. The use of cooperative learning groups lends itself particularly well to teaching students with differing abilities in the same classroom. Students should be grouped with consideration to differences in gender, race, ethnicity, and ability. Using assignments and activities that incorporate the recognition of multiple intelligences is necessary and particularly effective in responding to student diversity.
Precautions and Possible Pitfalls
It is of the utmost importance that teachers are prepared for cross-cultural, inclusive instruction. Classes in teacher education programs must include information about the characteristics of prejudice and racism, successful examples of teaching ethnic and language minority students, and instruction that provides both social support for students and intellectual challenge.
Teachers must also be sensitive to issues involving money. Perhaps every child in class canât afford the cost of a field trip. For one high school that was considering putting ATM machines on campus, the realization of the ways this could further divide students into âthe havesâ and âthe have notsâ caused administrators to rethink their decision.
Teachers should consult with experienced, exemplary teachers or school administrators before meeting with parents of immigrant students to determine if a translator might be needed, or if there is any specific information about that studentâs family culture that might assist the teacher in having a successful meeting. The same is true for a student with disabilities. The special education teacher and the Individualized Education Program (IEP) can provide beneficial information to the teacher. The more a teacher is sensitive to the richness of the diversity in his or her classroom, the more successful and equitable todayâs classrooms will become.
Sources
Banks, J. A., & Banks, C. A. M. (2001). Multicultural education: Issues and perspectives (4th ed.). New York: John Wiley.
Dugger, C. W. (1998, March 21). Among young of immigrants, outlook rises. New York Times, pp. A1, A11.
Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics. (1998). Americaâs children: Key national indicators of well-being. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
Salend, S. J. (2001). Creating inclusive classrooms: Effective and reflective practices (4th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill Prentice Hall.
U.S. Department of Education. (1995). 17th annual report to Congress on the implementation of IDEA. Washington, DC: Author.
Zeichner, K. M. (1993). Educating teachers for diversity. East Lansing, MI: National Center for Research on Teacher Learning.
STRATEGY 2: Move beyond âcolor blindâ teaching and take the time to know students in specific localized cultural contexts.
What the Research Says
More than 90 percent of classroom teachers in the United States are white, according to the National Education Association in 1997. It is no secret that they are teaching students who are of very different backgrounds from the teachers and from their fellow students. This statistic highlights a huge racial and cultural divide between teachers and the students in their classrooms. The gap is projected to keep growing. The Johnson study (2002) examined how white teachers conceptualized their own race and their studentsâ races, and how these views might affect teachersâ professional choices and practices.
This study gathered data through interviews of six white teachers from racially diverse classrooms who had been ânominatedâ as being aware of race and racism by a panel of experts. The teachersâ responses to semi-structured interviews focused on their racial identity along with a classroom visit and observations of teacher-student interactions. Johnsonâs analysis (Johnson, 2002) revealed that teachersâ cognition of racial and ethnic awareness was affected by the following:
⢠A perceived identity as âoutsidersâ due to social class background or sexual orientation that allowed them to âdis-identifyâ with the white mainstream
⢠Living and working with individuals of other races in relationships that approximated âequal status,â which exposed them to âinsiderâ views on race and racism
⢠Personal religious or philosophical beliefs that emphasized equality and social justice concerns (p. 153)
The information presented suggested implications for restructuring teacher education programs that included the following (Johnson, 2002, p. 153):
⢠Revising candidate selection criteria
⢠Increasing the racial diversity of students and faculty
⢠Experiencing some type of immersion program in communities of color
⢠Using autobiographical narratives, which serve as starting points for reflection and as pedagogical devices for identifying related issues
Classroom Applications
From the perspective of the white teacher, the term color blind is often used to describe a teacherâs idealized view on race and ethnic background. Many believe it is wrong to notice or speak about the race of their students. A teacher observed in the Johnson study stated she used to think it was wrong to notice the race of her students but she had changed her view. She said, âBefore I had that liberal mentality, that mentality where everyone is the same. Well, thatâs not true. This personâs experience may be very different than mine and I need to understand that before teaching them or before engaging them in conversationâ (Johnson, 2002, p. 161).
It is not race so much as it is the cultural context that a teacher needs to understand to better serve his or her students. For an educator, it is class background, sexual orientation, and racial and ethnic affiliations that must be understood. This moves the teacher beyond the âBlack-White paradigm.â This Black-White paradigm racializes African Americans but not whites. Teachers fail to see culture in their African American students and the huge range of ethnic diversity within their population.
Beyond the Black-White paradigm, the background of Hispanics and Hispanic social grouping is very different and exists well beyond the more known and understood Black-White paradigm. There is no legacy of slavery, and skin color is not as often seen as a clear racial distinction. Hispanics are discriminated against less for skin color but more for their Hispanic cultural stereotypes, surnames, language, and other characteristics that are more likely targets for bias.
In a hypothetical community, economically disadvantaged whites may culturally identify more closely with other economically disadvantaged racial minorities than with white middle-class values. The âwhite privilegeâ of the educated white teacher is far from their lives. Cultural differences can fall more along economic and educational background lines than skin color or other more familiar ethnic factors. Because of this, in some cases, it is the economic and educational divide that separates a teacherâs cultural context from his or her studentâs context, not ethnic or racial. When a teacher looks out into the classroom into that sea of faces, skin color only scratches the surface of the differences between individual students and between the students and the teacher.
Precautions and Potential Pitfalls
In the study of logic lies the fallacy of oversimplification. Some will try to, in an effort to understand, oversimplify a very complex social issue. There are so many variables in any community that overlaying a clichĂŠ understanding over any community would be a mistake. An accurate cultural context is built over time as a teacher becomes familiar with a community and the schoolâs demographics. Moving beyond the color-blind approach means that a teacher becomes truly engaged in seeking a clear understanding of a community and...
