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Final Reflection 822

5/7/2018

There have been many crucial things that I have learned throughout this course

through all the assignments, readings and discussions that have taken place but the

number one thing that stands out to me, is just how difficult it is to build a classroom that

is created in multiculturalism. Clearly it can be done, we’ve read about classrooms all

year long that have achieved the goal but the work that takes place to make it happen is

difficult but extremely necessary. It is easy to have a deficit mindset when it comes to

our classrooms and how inclusive we feel they may or may not be, but it is necessary to

find our areas for improvement so our students, of all cultures and backgrounds can not

only feel accepted but celebrated, each and every day that they step inside our

classrooms.

I gave the definition of multiculturalism in my final project and I will do it again

here, because I think getting a grasp on what you are trying to achieve is the obvious

first step to achieving your goal. The Glossary of Education Reform defines

multiculturalism as, “any form of education or teaching that incorporates the histories,

texts, values, beliefs, and perspectives of people from different cultural backgrounds”

(Education Reform, 2013). This definition is what I would consider the basic idea of

multiculturalism that teachers should strive for, now when I say “basic” I do not mean

that it is easy to attain or something that you see in all classrooms across the country,

far from it actually, in my opinion. I say that it is the basic idea because of one word in

that definition, “incorporates”. Just because we incorporate something in our classroom

does not mean that it happens every day or even regularly. Just because we
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incorporate something in our classroom does not mean that we incorporate it at an

acceptable or even higher level. I incorporate many things in my classroom, but many of

those things I would say I have quite a bit of room for improvement in, in regards to my

classroom. To me, Multicultural Education is the creation of curriculum, classroom

environments and culturally sustaining activities that reach all students in your class.

Your students should be able to enter your classroom and feel like their cultures, races,

and backgrounds are not only accepted, but celebrated. They should be able to see

people throughout history that look and have similar experiences as they do. Students

should be able to find books in the classroom library with protagonists that look as they

do. They should be able to see posters on the walls with people who look as they do.

I would charge educators to replace the word “incorporate” with “celebrate”. This

seemingly minor word replacement changes everything, in my opinion, when it comes to

multiculturalism in the classroom. I can incorporate Asian-American or African-American

books in my library, but without a celebration of the addition or differences between

texts, many of my students may not even be aware that these literatures have been

added. I feel that far too many educators treat multiculturalism as somewhat of a chore,

and I don’t mean to come off as holier than thou, because quite frankly, multiculturalism

is a time-consuming, difficult and sometimes frustrating concept to tackle. However,

when I see some educators talk about multiculturalism, even in schools with diverse

cultural backgrounds, I feel as if they are talking about going to the Secretary of State,

something that they have to do, to keep their classroom functioning and administration
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off their back. To treat the idea of multiculturalism this way is doing both your students

and yourself a great disservice.

If you treat the cultures and backgrounds of your students as a present that you

receive from each one of them on a daily basis, your classroom identity will become a

melting pot, one in which students feel safe and appreciated. One of the narratives that

we read this year, William Ayers, “​To Teach”​ is as close to a “Building Multiculturalism”

handbook as I’ve seen and the ideas throughout are things that I have immediately

begun to implement in my classroom. One of the things that Ayers stresses throughout

his book, which I believe is the foundation for any classroom that makes the claim to be

multicultural is that of building relationships with your students. “Teaching is often

bridge-building; beginning on one shore with the knowledge, experience, know-how,

and interests of the student, the teacher moves toward broader horizons and deeper

ways of knowing” (Ayers, 2010, 88). For us to begin to celebrate our students’ cultures,

we must first get to know those students and their lives. There was one quote that really

spoke to me in the building bridges chapter, “Culture is an important window into a child,

an essential part of any bridge’s blueprint, and effective teachers must learn to be

lifelong students of culture. This is an ongoing and potentially enormously satisfying

challenge...Their workshop is the students themselves, their families and

neighborhoods, and even wider circles embracing larger and larger communities.”

(Ayers, 99, 2010)​ ​We should know what they believe in, what holidays they celebrate,

what food they eat, and to the best of our ability, what makes them tick. This is not easy,
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it takes weeks, months, years and some students we may never truly understand but

we must try anyway.

One portion of culture that I think is sometimes overlooked is that of speech.

Many different students speak in many different dialects, languages and accents and as

educators we can get caught up in what is “grammatically correct” or “proper English”.

We must remember that how a student speaks is tied to their culture so if we chide

them for talking in a way that we view as incorrect, that student may begin to connect

their culture with “failure” or “wrong”. This happens especially with Black students and

African-American Vernacular or AAVE, we watched a documentary earlier in class that

really highlighted this occurrence. The older gentleman in the video mentioned that “You

see a lot of change in the way that Blacks talk...because some of this yakety-yak junk.”

(American Tongues, CBS) You don’t need to dig too deep to realize that this man

doesn’t put a lot, if any value into AAVE and as an extension those who speak it. It’s

been a clear stereotype since AAVE has been introduced as a language, that many, if

not all who speak it are poorly educated and don’t know how to talk “right.”

Often neglected in making sure students feel that their cultures and ideas are

celebrated in your classroom, is the role that our own ideas and cultures in building that

multicultural curriculum. The role that we have as educators, I thought was discussed

extremely well in one of our earlier readings, “​ Comprehensive Multicultural Education”.

““First of all, we must accept that schools can and should make a difference... We can

then proceed as follows: Examine our own attitudes, experiences, and behaviors

concerning racism. Identify specific ways of combating racism, and become antiracist in
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our own behavior” (Bennett, 2019). Too often, we as educators are stuck in a rut of

underestimating the power that our schools and our classrooms have in helping to

combat the negative and discriminatory tendencies that exist both outside and

unfortunately, sometimes inside our schools. However, as Bennett keenly identifies, the

work must begin with ourselves. It can be difficult to take a look in the mirror and admit

our negative tendencies, especially the ones that impact our students, but it is

something that must be done if we are to create the multicultural curriculum and

classroom that we seek.

The final portion of building a multicultural curriculum and classroom that I want

to touch on, is the idea of being willing to admit your inaccuracies and incorrect ideas.

This really started to become a part of essential multicultural curriculum, to me, when

we watched and read the media on LGBTQ students and ideas, a couple of weeks ago.

As I watched the documentary ​Elementary​ one thing that I noticed many teachers did to

teach LGBTQ concepts, was to flush out all of the information their students had,

whether it be correct or not, beforehand and try to find where that information was

coming from. We must strive to do this as educators across all topics, whether it bet

LGBTQ, racism or another “difficult” topic. Just as I touched on earlier, about how

crucial it is as educators to admit our own shortcomings or incorrect ideas, it is

absolutely just as crucial to do the same with our students. Many students, regardless of

the background of the background they come from, have very few ideas or concepts of

other cultures or ideals, and many times the ideas that they do have are incorrect or

rooted in mainstream media.

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One of the big roadblocks that presents itself about the education of our students

about LBTQ individuals and other difficult topics, including racism, sexism,

discrimination and other difficult topics has nothing to do with the curriculum. I believe

that it is fear. Fear from teachers, administrators, and parents of the push back or

backlash that they will receive from teaching such a “taboo” topic. Overcoming this fear

is one of the last and most difficult steps in my estimation to creating a multicultural

curriculum. We are tasked with difficult things every single day as educators but we

must do our best to overcome those obstacles and push forward, doing what’s best for

our students. This is no different when it comes to creating multicultural curriculum.

There are things that we cannot control, like other teachers or administrators responses

to our curriculum and ideas, but we must continue to stay the course and believe in both

ourselves and our students.

There are very few easy tasks throughout the field of education but cultivating a

classroom that all students are able to feel not only physically safe, but culturally as

well, may be one of the most difficult. It is important to remember that multiculturalism is

not going to look the same from class to class, it is not a standard in which all teachers

will be able to reach all students using the same methods or ideas, like Algebra or

Science. It is something that takes time, time to build trust, to build relationships and

self-worth. However, it is perhaps one of the most valuable things that can be found in a

classroom, which is why as educators, we must work so hard to make sure that it is

seen in ours.
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Works Cited

Ayers, William. ​To Teach: the Journey of a Teacher​. Teachers College Press, 2010.

Bennett, C. I. (2019). ​Comprehensive multicultural education: Theory and practice​.

Pearson Education.

Partnership, Great Schools. “Multicultural Education Definition.” ​The Glossary of

Education Reform​, 30 Aug. 2013, www.edglossary.org/multicultural-education/.

“The Different Ways Americans Speak - American Tongues Episode #1.” ​YouTube​,

YouTube, 9 June 2010,

www.youtube.com/watch?v=QojGc9M0W2s&list=PL6089621A87373FBE.

New day films. “It's Elementary - Gay Issues In Schools - New Day Films - LBGT -

Children, Youth, and ; Families.” ​YouTube,​ YouTube, 13 Aug. 2009,

www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWyj_OfQpnU.