What Does it Mean to be a Multicultural Educator?

 

While a good definition of multicultural education is simply, “Multicultural education incorporates the idea that all students - regardless of their gender, sexual orientation, social class, and ethnic, racial, or cultural characteristics - should have an equal opportunity to learn in school,” (Banks, p. 3) all that those words entail are complex.

 I have been teaching for over 20 years, and multicultural education has come to mean different things. When I first did my student teaching, I would say the school district thought it was doing well because it occasionally celebrated different heritages. It most certainly was a “tourist-based approach.” (Banks, p. 26) In today’s classroom, we have come a long way but still have a long way to go.  Being a multicultural classroom or school or district means examining and changing everything from policies, curriculum, assessment, delivery styles and every other aspect of our instruction and reach.

 Because I teach Adult Education and ESL students, my classroom is diverse in every possible way.  My students have ranged in age from 16 to 67, a multitude of ethnicities and refugees, immigrants, and international students from many different countries. It is easy to see them as their background or their country or even their gender or skin color.  A multicultural educator sees the big picture. They recognize the beauty in uniqueness and diversity. And they celebrate all within the classroom community as individuals and as a whole.

 The video, “The Danger of a Single Story,” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (below) moved me to consider how I approach their learning and their participation. Do I view them differently as they are from “third-world countries?” Do I ask different questions and in different ways because they come from underprivileged areas and schools? Do I assume their ability to retain deeper concepts because of their background or criminal history?  Do I contribute to the racial or individual gap in learning? (Lee, p.3)

 As teachers, we should constantly be striving for multicultural classrooms. And as Lee states, “Multiculturalism is the ideal state in which people’s culture, language, heritage and humanity are fully valued.” (p.4)

 I had a substitute one day who had no experience with the unique population I teach and he made a comment that they should be able to do a certain skill because it was “second-grade level concepts and they obviously either couldn’t handle that or they couldn’t understand the material because of a language barrier.” Needless to say, he no longer substitutes for our department or college.

 What he assumed about my students was that they were either 1) not smart enough to finish school and that is why they had dropped out or 2) they could not understand English enough to accomplish the task.  He was seeing them as a single story.  What he (and many people) assume about students in Adult Education, is that they are not capable or lazy or uneducated. But in my experience, that is not the single story of any of them.  They are in their situation due to circumstances, either outside their control (like parent drug-use, health issues, or even government violence in their own country) or from poor life choices they are trying to fix.

 What struck me from the video, and also my classroom, is that the single-story way of thinking can change how the person views themselves. And that, in turn, will affect every aspect of their lives, including their level of education.

 

Banks, J. & McGee Banks, C. (Eds.) (2016). Multicultural education: Issues and perspectives. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Lee, E., Menkaret, D. & Okazawa-Rey, M. (1998). Beyond Heroes and Holidays: A Practical Guide to K-12 Anti-Racist, Multicultural Education and Staff Development. Washington, D.C.: Teaching for Change.