Multicultural Education Action Plan

GOAL!

Multicultural education is about school reform - a change in how we create an teach curriculum.

Through multicultural education our students learn to be critical thinkers and analyzers of the world they are a part of - beyond their city, state or country. It lets students learn from and through their personal experiences and helps them be empowered members of society.

Resources

Multicultural Education is Critical Pedagogy

How Can I Do This?

Creating classrooms for equity and social justice. (n.d.). Rethinking Schools. Retrieved June 21, 2014, from http://www.rethinkingschools.org/static/publication/roc1/Intro.pdf

Creating an anti-racist classroom. (n.d.). Edutopia. Retrieved June 21, 2014, from http://www.edutopia.org/blog/anti-racist-classroom-danielle-moss-lee

Multicultural education in your classroom. (n.d.). TeachHUB. Retrieved June 24, 2014, from http://www.teachhub.com/multicultural-education-your-classroom

Nieto, S., & Bode, P. (2012). Affirming diversity: the sociopolitical context of multicultural education (6th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education.

Ten steps to equity in education. (n.d.). Organisation for economic co-operation and development. Retrieved June 22, 2014, from http://www.oecd.org/education/school/39989494.pdf

• Multicultural education is neither neutral nor apolitical
• Multicultural education values diversity and encourages critical thinking, reflection and action
• Multicultural education does not emphasize passivity, acceptance and submissiveness
• Multicultural education is liberating, encouraging students to take risks, to be curious and to question
• Multicultural education reflects on multiple and contradictory perspectives to understand reality more fully

Critical pedagogy acknowledges rather than suppresses diversity of all kinds

~ Nieto & Bode, 2012, p. 54-58

• Encourage and empower students to become active learners individually and collectively
• Engage in critical literacy
• School initiatives:
• dismantle tracking
• discontinue standardized tests
• lengthen the school day
• choosing multicultural curriculum
• equal educational opportunities
• Explore myths
• analyze things we accept as truth because that is what we are told
• Provide alternative and multiple views of a topic
• Help students understand all viewpoints - even those they may disagree with

~ Nieto & Bode, 2012, p. 54-58

How Can I Do This?

Multicultural Education is a Process

• Continue to educate myself on multicultural education and how to incorporate it into my school
• Create a classroom based on sensitivity and understanding
• Adjust classroom policies and practices that restrict or boost culture groups

~ Nieto & Bode, 2012, p. 53

• Multicultural education is ongoing
• Multicultural education is dynamic
• Multicultural education involves relationships among people
• Multicultural education concerns intangibles such as expectations of student achievement, learning environments, students' learning preferences, and other cultural variables
• Multicultural education is more complex than changing perceptions. It is changing practices and policies.

~ Nieto & Bode, 2012, p. 53

How Can I Do This?

Multicultural Education is Education for Social Justice

• Respect all children and their capacity to learn
• Create curriculum based on student needs
• Promote and practice democracy in the classroom
• Teach children to pose essential questions to real world problems
• Who makes decisions and who is left out?
• Who benefits and who suffers?
• Why is a given practice fair or unfair?
• What alternatives can we imagine?
• What is required to create change?
• Create first hand opportunities for students to experience what they learn
• Help students to come to see themselves as truth-tellers and change-makers
• Be culturally sensitive.
• I don't know it all, so ask questions

http://www.rethinkingschools.org/static/publication/roc1/Intro.pdf

• Multicultural education connects theory with reflection and action
• Multicultural education is learning how to think in more inclusive and expansive ways
• Multicultural education is reflecting on what is learned
• Multicultural education is applying whay is learned to real situations
• Multicultural education invites students and teachers to put their learning into action for treating all people with fairness, respect, dignity and generosity.

~ Nieto & Bode, 2012, p. 12, 51-52

How Can I Do This?

Multicultural Education is Pervasive

• Multicultural education is neither an activity that happens at a set period of the day nor another subject area to be "covered"
• Multicultural education permeates everything
• Schools in a multicultural setting are learning environments in which curriculum, pedagogy and outreach are all consistent with a broadly conceptualized multicultural philosophy

~ Nieto & Bode, 2012, p. 50-51

• Integrate a diverse reading list that demonstrates the universal human experience across cultures
• Encourage community participation and social activism
• Go beyond the textbook
• 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.
• Creating multicultural projects that require students to choose a background outside of their own
• Suggest that your school host an in-service professional development on multi-cultural education in the classroom

http://www.teachhub.com/multicultural-education-your-classroom

How Can I Do This?

Multicultural Education is Important for All Students

• Creating a safe, accepting and successful learning environment for all
• Increasing awareness of global issues
• Strengthening cultural consciousness
• Strengthening intercultural awareness
• Teaching students that there are multiple historical perspectives
• Encouraging critical thinking
• Preventing prejudice and discrimination

http://www.teachhub.com/multicultural-education-your-classroom

Multicultural Education Action Plan

• Multicultural education is not just for students of color, for urban students or for so-called disadvantaged or at-risk students
• Multicultural education helps ALL students get a whole education
• Multicultural education helps prevent cultural blindness
• Multicultural education is inclusive
• Multicultural education helps give students a realistic view of the world and accurately see their place in it

Making curriculum multicultural enriches it.

~ Nieto & Bode, 2012, p. 48-50

How Can I Do This?

Multicultural Education is

Basic Education

• Provide help for those who fall behind
• This can be much bigger when school-wide
• Maintain good contact with home
• weekly emails home
• parent help online
• Inclusion of different cultural groups
• Limit tracking (school-wide)
• Provide second chances
• Provide extra opportunity to review and access materials (LMS)
• Include multicultural aspects as part of curriculum and not as add-ons

http://www.oecd.org/education/school/39989494.pdf

• Multicultural education is required to be a core part of curriculum and not an add-on
• can be perceived as irrelevant
• Multicultural education is not monocultural education which:
• reflects only one reality
• biased toward the dominant group
• only a fraction of available knowledge is taught
• incomplete education
• excludes any people and perspectives from schools' curricula and pedagogy
• deprives all students of the diversity that is part of our world
• ethnocentric
• Multicultural education goes beyond curriculum change and asks questions about equity and access to courses.

All students deserve a chance at an equitable and high-quality education

~ Nieto & Bode, 2012, p. 46-48

How Can I Do This?

Multicultural Education is Antiracist Education

Multicultural teaching is excellence in teaching. It is not so much a dialogue of whether we can get there or not, but rather a willingness to learn more about ourselves as instructors, our students, what we teach, and how we teach it so that we can provide the highest form of education possible for all students. ~ Christine A. Stanley

• Don't ignore race
• Seek our established community organizations
• Remember that communities of color are not monolithic
• Read - Seek out resources, books and professional development opportunities to strengthen my capacity to effectively educate all of my students.
• Be self-aware
• have high expectations of all students
• provide feedback to all
• give positive feedback to all students
• be consistent with discipline

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/anti-racist-classroom-danielle-moss-lee

• Multicultural education makes antiracism and antidiscrimination specific parts of the curriculum
• Multicultural education teaches students skills to confront racism
• Multicultural education requires teachers to examine school policies and practices, curriculum and material choices sorting policies and teachers' interactions and relationships with students and their families
• Multicultural education requires schools to honestly confront the negative aspects of history, the arts and science
• Multicultural education requires educators to broaden their understanding and use their new skills to create affirming learning environments for all students

Although not everyone is directly guilty of discrimination, we are all responsible for combating it. This means that working actively for social justice is everyone's business.

~ Nieto & Bode, 2012, p. 43-46

Seven Basic Characteristics of Multicultural Education

• Antiracist Education
• Basic Education
• Important For All Students
• Pervasive
• Education For Social Justice
• A Process
• Critical Pedagogy

Nieto & Bode, 2012, p.42