Multicultural Education

Matthew Lynch published in Diversity, Equity, HBCU's, Matthew Lynch, Policy & Reform

The Call to Teach: Multicultural Education

America’s “melting pot” status is one that most citizens are proud to claim. The fact that people here often refer to themselves as one ethnicity or another, and rarely as simply an American, is proof that being from somewhere else – however far removed – is a source of familial pride. Even African Americans, who do not always have an Ellis Island story in the family tree, find collective strength in the stories of their ancestors and what it means for their lives today. This blending of cultures is both a blessing and curse of the K-12 classroom. With more diversity than ever, teachers have to adjust methods from one student to the next, and from one year to the next. Multicultural education is about more than a classroom with varied skin color – it includes careful examination of the neighborhoods, parenting styles and general experiences that shape each and every K-12 student.

In my new book The Call to Teach: An Introduction to Teaching, I examine multicultural education and what impact the diverse students of today will have on the next generation of educators. Today I want to touch on the term “multiculturalism” and examine its meaning in K-12 classrooms.

Defining Multiculturalism

In its most basic sense, multicultural education is a progressive approach for transforming education based on educational equality and social justice. The components required in educating a multicultural education are content integrations, prejudice reduction, empowering school culture and social culture. These all relate and all require attention as they relate to the efforts of conflict resolution in today’s world. What kids learn in their classroom environments when it comes to interactions with those who are different from them translates into how well they will manage life in the global marketplace.

In the last century, there has been an increase in global mutual acceptance of opposing views and different cultures – though arguably, there is still a long way to go. Specifically when it comes to America, it is crucial that multicultural education exist with the increasing number of students who speak a second language and come from somewhere else. Diversity exists even within mainstream society and students need to have the communication life skills that multicultural education promotes.

Teaching in a Multicultural Society

So what does all this talk about multiculturalism really mean in the contemporary classroom? What can teachers do to make sure they practice pedagogical individualism and promote the diversity that exists in society as a whole? Since each classroom is different, each approach will be varied as well. Some important common ground when it comes to multicultural teaching should include:

Careful observation. David Kolb created a four-step model for really understanding the needs of a particular student group. He starts with concrete experience, adds reflective observation and then moves to abstract conceptualization and active experimentation. In other words, multicultural education cannot be taught in a textbook. It must be developed by each educator based on a particular student group.

Learning style guidance. Teachers can help students discover their academic strengths by helping them discover their own learning style. In this way, students discover what method of comprehension works best for them based on their own backgrounds and personalities. If educators make this learning style quest a class project, an inherent lesson in multiculturalism is taught.

Pride in heritage. Educators should look for ways to emphasize the differences between students in a positive light. This might mean writing essays on family background or partnering with other students to help each other develop projects that accent the culture of the other. This can include prompts that look back on family history for generations, or could ask students to look at their current family setup.

There are scores of ways that educators can approach multiculturalism in K-12 classrooms but the first step is recognizing its importance. For today’s students to experience lifelong success on the global scale, educators must recognize the need for multiculturalism in pedagogy.

How do you adjust to and promote multiculturalism in your classrooms?

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Matthew Lynch published in Diversity, Teachers

What teachers need to know about multicultural education

**The Edvocate is pleased to publish guest posts as way to fuel important conversations surrounding P-20 education in America. The opinions contained within guest posts are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of The Edvocate or Dr. Matthew Lynch.**

A guest column by Rae Votta

For a brief time, at the inadvisable age of 20, I had a brief stint teaching English and Social Studies in West Philadelphia. I’d never taken a formal education class, nor had I any real aspirations of teaching middle schoolers, but I was part of a bandage-style solution aimed at fixing failing school systems by patching them with inexperienced but optimistic young teachers.

I’m white, and not a single one of my students were white. This is none too surprising, considering the demographics of West Philadelphia, as well as the propensity for college-educated young white adults wishing to “give back” by working in low-income neighborhoods. Despite the fact that there’s a call for nonwhite teachers to work with students of color, which often produces better educational results, 80% of teachers are white—and that doesn’t seem to be changing any time soon. One of the things I learned clearly and quickly during this experience was that there is a gap in the educational standards of what was expected in predominantly white, middle-class, suburban schools versus what urban and low-income schools had available to their students. In addition, the cultures surrounding those students have a massive effect on how the education system works for or against them. Reflecting multiculturalism in the classroom is imperative in our increasingly multicultural society.

For me, teaching was as much of an education on culture as it was a fundamental education for the 13-year-olds I taught. While we worked our way through the common core, we also worked our way through navigating a school system that told them learning Social Studies didn’t require dedicated books. My parents would have stormed the school if I came home telling them I wasn’t given a book for a subject, but not a single one of my students’ parents complained, nor did the students seem concerned. Instead, we worked around it, and my students were adaptable to items I brought in; they became an active part of determining what they were interested in and what we’d learn about under the massive umbrella of “World History.” Instead of falling into the trap of a Eurocentric approach, we decided to mix it up and include Africa, since we didn’t have a book dictating our every move.

For my students, or at least some of them, our brief time together was eye-opening for them about a different world outside of the few blocks they inhabited in Philadelphia. At 13, I had been obsessed with college, and so I thought some of my students might be as well. I brought in magazines about picking the right college and about getting ready for applications in high school. No one had really emphasized this to them before. A group of students who had acknowledged the existence of the colleges in their town thought that maybe they’d be lucky enough to attend one since, as one told me, there was a McDonalds near one. That was when I realized that, in their world, a fast-food joint that’s taken for granted elsewhere was considered almost a luxury, or a neighborhood perk, to these students. By the end of my time teaching, the students had started to learn about out-of-state colleges and realized they could aim for them if they wanted. I sat one high-achieving student down with her mother and explained that she was the smartest girl in her grade, but that kids like her in suburbia were already doing SAT prep and practicing essay writing. I gave her books so she could compete outside of the confines of her community.

There is a call for the opposite of my situation as well—to increase the diversity of teachers for predominantly white schools. After my experiences on both sides of the situation, I cannot agree more. For all my well-meaning suburban teachers, I can’t remember a single one who wasn’t white, and I think that was a disservice to my understanding of the world outside of my bubble—until I was in the “real world” as an adult. Outside of history classes about emancipation and civil rights, no one talked about how racism applies to other areas of education, and no one took stock of the diversity of our source material. No teacher or educational leader had ever led me to believe there were other types of community and culture outside of the one we existed within.

One moment that stands out from my time as a teacher was when I was trying to mitigate the daily fighting that broke out in my classroom. It was a far cry from my middle school education, where fights were few and far between. At first, I tried to bandage the situation and just tell them to stop, assuming that my authority was all that was needed. It wasn’t until one day that I stopped lessons, sat everyone down, and said, “Tell me why this happens” that I understood the cultural issue at play that I’d simply never experienced. My students expressed that they had to stand up for themselves, that their families had instilled a value of not backing down, and with honor on the line the threat of a suspension didn’t matter because dishonor was worse. Knowing this, however, did not stop my students from fighting, and neither did my explanations of how there were different ways to handle conflict. On the other hand, understanding the cultural aspects of the situation gave me new ways to handle such conflicts.

Multicultural diversity in education is not just about what is taught to the students, but who is teaching these students and the interplay between the cultures of the educator and of the students. The more diversity we can infuse into the mix, the better the outcomes for both students and teachers.

____________________

Rae Votta is a senior account planner from Prime Access, one of the largest health and wellness marketing agency and is the only full-service advertising and marketing communications company at the intersection of health care and multicultural markets.

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Matthew Lynch published in Diversity, Equity, Policy & Reform, Teachers

6 Ways Teachers can Foster Cultural Awareness in the Classroom

A multicultural society is best served by a culturally responsive curriculum.  Schools that acknowledge the diversity of their student population understand the importance of promoting cultural awareness.  Teachers who are interested in fostering a cultural awareness in their classroom should actively demonstrate to their students that they genuinely care about their cultural, emotional, and intellectual needs.  To this end, there are several strategies that you can use to build trusting relationships with diverse students. To incorporate cultural awareness into your classroom curriculum, you should:

1.  Express interest in the ethnic background of your students.  Encourage your students to research and share information about their ethnic background as a means of fostering a trusting relationship with fellow classmates.  Analyze and celebrate differences in traditions, beliefs, and social behaviors.  It is of note that this task helps European-American students realize that their beliefs and traditions constitute a culture as well, which is a necessary breakthrough in the development of a truly culturally responsive classroom.  Also, take the time to learn the proper pronunciation of student names and express interest in the etymology of interesting and diverse names.

2.  Redirect your role in the classroom from instructor to facilitator.  Another important requirement for creating a nurturing environment for students is reducing the power differential between the instructor and students.  Students in an authoritarian classroom may sometimes display negative behaviors as a result of a perceived sense of social injustice; in the culturally diverse classroom, the teacher thus acts more like a facilitator than an instructor.  Providing students with questionnaires about what they find to be interesting or important provides them with a measure of power over what they get to learn and provides them with greater intrinsic motivation and connectedness to the material.  Allowing students to bring in their own reading material and present it to the class provides them with an opportunity to both interact with and share stories, thoughts, and ideas that are important to their cultural and social perspective.

3.  Maintain a strict level of sensitivity to language concerns.  In traditional classrooms, students who are not native English speakers often feel marginalized, lost, and pressured into discarding their original language in favor of English.  In a culturally responsive classroom, diversity of language is celebrated and the level of instructional materials provided to non-native speakers are tailored to their level of English fluency.  Accompanying materials should be provided in the student’s primary language and the student should be encouraged to master English.

4.  Maintain high expectations for student performance.  Given that culturally responsive instruction is a student-centered philosophy, it should come as no surprise that expectations for achievement are determined and assigned individually for each student.  Students don’t receive lavish praise for simple tasks but do receive praise in proportion to their accomplishments. If a student is not completing her work, then one should engage the student positively and help guide the student toward explaining how to complete the initial steps that need to be done to complete a given assignment or task.

5.  Incorporate methods for self-testing.  Another potent method for helping students become active participants in learning is to reframe the concept of testing.  While testing is usually associated with grades (and therefore stress) in traditional classrooms, in a culturally responsive classroom frequent non-graded tests can be used to provide progress checks and ensure that students don’t fall behind on required material. Teaching students to self-test while learning new information will help them better remember and use what they’ve learned in class and will help them realize on their own when they need to study a topic in greater depth.

6.  Maintain an “inclusive” curriculum that remains respectful of differences.  A culturally responsive curriculum is both inclusive in that it ensures that all students are included within all aspects of the school and it acknowledges the unique differences students may possess. A culturally responsive curriculum also encourages teachers’ understanding and recognition of each student’s non-school cultural life and background, and provides a means for them to incorporate this information into the curriculum, thus promoting inclusion.

Schools have the responsibility to teach all students how to synthesize cultural differences into their knowledge base, in order to facilitate students’ personal and professional success in a diverse world.  A culturally responsive curriculum helps students from a minority ethnic/racial background develop a sense of identity as individuals, as well as proudly identify with their particular culture group. Teachers can play a big role in helping these students succeed through the establishment of culturally responsive classrooms.

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