Multicultural Classrooms

What do we do in a Multicultural Classroom?

In today's day in age, we are constantly being bombarded with diversity. Through our race, gender, sexuality, language, etc. In a world that is comprised with so many different cultures, how do we set up a classroom that caters to all of these different cultures? 

Multicultural Classrooms provide an atmosphere that each and every student feels represented in and respected in. As TeachHub puts it, "America has always been referred to as a melting pot, but ideally, it's a place where we strive to invite everyone to celebrate exactly who they are."   TeachHub provides a place where teachers can go to read articles on several different topics such as Multicultural Education. The article that is linked to TeachHub is about Multicultural Education and what you can do in your own classroom. Some of the suggestions TeachHub gives to start implementing Multicultural Education are:  

• Encourage community participation and social activism
• Go beyond the textbook
• Integrate a diverse reading list that demonstrates the universal human experience across cultures
• Creating multicultural projects that require students to choose a background outside of their own
• By supplementing your curriculum with current events and news stories outside the textbook, you can draw parallels between the distant experiences of the past and the world today.

The website also gives links to different books such as Becoming Multicultural Educators by Geneva Gay and Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American Text Book Got Wrong by James Loewen. It also gives ideas for lesson plans that incorporate multicultural education. 

Another website geared towards building a Multicultural Classroom is edchange.org.

 "A teacher influences eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops." -Henry Adams

Edchange.org focuses on multicultural education and creating a multicultural classroom. 

The Ten Commandments of Multicultural Educators 

There are several building blocks to create a multicultural classroom. One of them is for the student to be open to getting to know their students inside and outside their class. Notions of certain cultures need to be put away in order to fully take into account the student to find out what his or her needs are. Not every student learns the same way and it is important for teachers to start by getting to know his or her students to be able to modify his or her instruction and classroom to include every student. 

"Teachers in multicultural classrooms must be open to their students and put forth the effort needed to get to know their students inside and outside of class. If a teacher is hesitant about being open, the class will reciprocate and the students will become estranged from one another and the teacher." 

From our readings in class we have found that students feel estranged and alienated when they do not feel represented. Such is the case in instances of sexuality or language barriers. Teachers have to be open in order for their students to be open and comfortable. 

I believe in Multicultural Classrooms. We need to move from the system that has been geared towards white males in the beginning, to a system where every group and culture feels represented and accepted. Only then will we start to make headway in providing quality education for each and every student.