Multicultural Education as a Process

I have been taking into account the ideas of the course and the readings and discussions about multicultural education and how important it is for all students because of the impact it has on their learning and their social and cultural well-being. After reading Transforming myself to Transform my Classroom (2001) by Paul Gorski, I have a much better understanding of how to go about a multicultural transformation in schools.

Gorski brings up a strong argument that teachers and educators will easily agree to discussion on curriculum changes and cultural diversity appearing. He brings up that the resistance that is occurring is about self-change or self-transformation. I found one of the most interesting part of the article is when he is talking about the process and how the most difficult, and essentially, the scariest part, was realizing or knowing that he had prejudices or biases even when he didn't want to have them because he had considered himself a tolerant liberal man.

This article ties in well to what we are reading and discussing with the class because Gorski creates a list of the "Ten Critical and Self-critical Things I Can Do to Be a Better Multicultural Educator". His list includes reflecting on reactions to people and events, recognizing social identity, understanding the relationship between intent and impact, and many other ways that changing yourself will better your teaching as a multicultural teacher.

http://www.edchange.org/multicultural/papers/edchange_10things.html

Addressing the issue of racism

In the beginning of the course we have talked about the culture that students have and the culture that students lose when they are in our classrooms. The article I read was published by John Hopkins University and it talked about multicultural education in classrooms and racism being a serious issue and topic for discussion. We could all get our first jobs in schools filled with students with various backgrounds and races and a point that is brought up in the article is that the majority of us would at some point be nervous to say the wrong thing, or say something politically incorrect.

The solution in the article ties into our readings really well. We talk about creating an environment for students that allows their culture to be prevalent. Create a classroom for students that they will want to open up and talk about their culture, but it will also take away from a personal tension of addressing races in the room. The article talks about the difficulty of a topic for whites because of potential reprimands, perhaps unlikely though.  This is a hard subject rally but creating a multicultural classroom will provide students the best ways to learn.

http://education.jhu.edu/PD/newhorizons/strategies/topics/multicultural-education/recreating-schools-for-all-children/index.html