Multicultural Education

Multicultural Education

What is culture? That question is often answered by referring to someone’s ethnic background; I liked the fact the Stacy and Chelsea included, race, age, gender, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation and religion. It always seems to me that there is too much focus on one aspect of multicultural education and little is said about others. I often get tired of teachers and adults in the community; like those in the video we watched, telling our students that they need to be tolerant of others and accept them for who they are but when something makes them uncomfortable they simply try to eradicate from their schools. It would be nice if they remembered that the schools are for the students and they are the ones that need to be comfortable.
I noticed that Stacy and Chelsea pointed out that visual judgment should be kept out of teaching. I thought that was a powerful statement. It has been around for a long time and said many ways, such as you can’t judge a book by its cover. I feel that in schools today there is more pressure from the adults to put on a book cover so that the students all fit into a mold of the teachers choosing. In my teaching I will encounter students who have broken the mold so to speak and I am looking forward to seeing just what is written on the inside pages of each of their individual books.
I wish there was more information on assessment, testing, and evaluating a student’s performance appropriately and doing these while being culturally sensitive to all the cultures. I feel like there will always be something left unchecked or misunderstood by some one no matter how hard we try. Going into Special Education I will be noting AYP for all my students so this could directly affect my profession. I will keep a close watch on the changes when they come.
The presentation was engaging, informative, interesting and enlightening. Chelsea and Stacy did a great job and worked well as a team. I learned several things that I will bring into my teaching. The most important one is the “no visual judgment”.