Michigan Reading Association Annual Conference

I attended the Michigan Reading Association’s annual conference Saturday, March 15^th. The seminars I chose to attend at the conference were all extremely interesting and I learned a lot about incorporating literature in the classroom during each session. One of my favorite sessions corresponded to this class and was entitled Beyond Heroes and Holidays: Teacher’s Enactment of Multicultural Education throughout the Year.” This seminar discussed a middle school teacher’s ideas about how students’ cultural identity can be included in the curriculum throughout the year – not just during Black History Month, for example.

One thing that the speaker discussed was the fact that some students may have difficulty identifying themselves as part of a specific culture. For example, she shared her experiences in the classroom as several of her Caucasian students claimed that they did not have a culture, they were “just white.” This view is most likely a result of the educational system traditionally regarding multicultural education as paying attention to and respecting those thought of as the “other” while whites are seen as the cultural “norm.” This connects to Peggy McIntosh’s article “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.” In her article, McIntosh claims that those who identify themselves as “white” do not realize the advantages that are given to them based on their race alone. One of these advantages is that they are considered the “norm” by many. However, this could be detrimental as students who claim to have no culture at all will not connect to and understand their heritage.

A common thing teachers attempt to do to solve the perceived dilemma of incorporating and respecting each individual student’s culture is to claim that they are “colorblind” and are able to ignore race and teach all students the same. Although this may sound positive on the surface, the speaker made an insightful claim: teachers who teach all students exactly the same are like doctors treating all their patients the same and prescribing the same medicine regardless of unique conditions. Instead, teachers should allow each student to identify with their own unique culture and make use of the diversity that exists in the classroom.

In order to respect the various cultures that are present in any given classroom, one suggestion is to provide opportunities for students to use their home language in school, specifically during reading and writing. This idea can be seen in Bronx Masquerade as the students in the novel are encouraged to express themselves using language that is most comfortable to them. This allows students to better connect with new information as they become more involved and interested in their learning.

Another suggestion is to implement a whole year project where students would intimately learn aspects of different cultures – including but not limited to their own. One aspect of this project would be to have students create a scrapbook page that depicts the important aspects of their culture. The teacher would encourage parents to assist their children in the construction of the page, which would add another dimension to the task. The entire class would combine their scrapbook pages and keep the completed book on display in the classroom library throughout the year.

Another aspect of the ongoing project would be to have students read multiple multicultural texts and write responses to their reading in a journal. These books would be chosen by the students, not the teacher, and there would be no limitations as to what novels should be used. The only requirement of this component would be to have the students choose one book that corresponds to their own culture. When the speaker implemented this in her classroom, student responses were highly positive and students were excited to be given to opportunity to explore these books. One student claimed that it was her “first experience with a book like this” and she was “very happy to have found and read it” because she “learned a lot about my culture that I didn’t know before.”

Although the seminar was short and only a few ideas could be discussed about how to incorporate multicultural literature throughout the curriculum, it got me to start thinking about how the books we read in this class can be used in an actual classroom. I was happy to hear a teacher share her story about how these strategies worked for students to learn about their own, as well as other, cultures. I learned how important it is to make students understand that their culture is valuable and respected at all times, not just on holidays that celebrate a particular culture.