Multicultural Content and Multiple Perspectives

Multiculturalism in the Classroom at Heights Charter

I teach in a very culturally homogeneous suburb of San Diego. Our school is close to 77% white (3 times greater than the state average), 12% Hispanic (1/5 the state average), 2.5 % Asian (1/5 the state average), 2% black (1/3 the state average), and 2% American Indian (3 times the state average due to our proximity to three local reservations). The school is nearly 100% Christian. Students at our school don't get to interact with children very different from themselves with any regularity. Because of this, it is important to expose them to multicultural themes as much as possible.

I think that a goal of an educator is to get students to see that the world they live in may not be the same world as that someone of a different race, religion, or socioeconomic status.  It is important to build empathy and understanding in students that something that is not seen as an obstacle to success by them, might seem insurmountable by someone else.

One of the ways this can be accomplished in an English classroom is by integrating engaging texts that have protagonists very different from the school's audience.  Texts like Esparanza Rising, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, and The Watson's Go to Birmingham expose students to sympathetic protagonists who have to struggle through issues of racial discrimination and socioeconomic status. As instructors we can facilitate conversations about how the characters are similar and different than ourselves. How would we respond if we were put in the same circumstances as these characters?  Through these explorations, students are able to make connections with these characters that they can use to construct their world views.

So how will we know students are making connections and developing cultural competence? Clearly, we can fully dive into the minds of our students, but through discussions and conversations, we can see how deeply students are making connections. What kinds of comments are they making? What kinds of questions are they asking?  After teaching a multicultural lesson such as the narrative fiction plan I created, teachers can have the students write reflections about what they have learned and how they think they might apply the knowledge to their daily lives.

It's a big world out there with all kinds of people.  We need to expose our students to as many of those people as we can because the more we know, the more we see how alike we all are.