What is Multicultural Education?

As I begin to think about answering this question, I think of the many different activities that I have done in my kindergarten classroom to teach multicultural education. Several years ago, Governor Phil Bredesen, who was then the Mayor of Nashville, decided that we needed a Core Curriculum for the Davidson County Schools. That curriculum included a multicultural education piece. We were to teach about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and different African Americans who had made significant contributions to our country during Black History Month. Also included in our curriculum, was the teaching of Hanukah and Kwanzaa in December along with our winter holidays unit. As a kindergarten teacher, I read stories about famous African Americans, had the students do a couple of projects, did a few cooking activities like latkes and sweet potato pie, and thought I had done my job. While this was a great start, after reading pieces on the multicultural pavilion site, I realize that I was only scratching the surface of multicultural education.

In my opinion, multicultural education should be teaching all students to be respectful and tolerant of each other and their different beliefs. In order to do this, we have to teach students about other cultures. I like the activities described on the multicultural pavilion site under the awareness activities. I especially liked the activity on building respect and community. Each day in kindergarten we have a morning meeting to begin our day. This time is a great opportunity to build respect and community within my classroom. Students can be given the opportunity to share about themselves. One of our school-wide rules is to be respectful. I think students can learn that being respectful of someone is not necessarily always agreeing with that person, but allowing each person to have their own opinion without repercussions. I also liked the activity where students learn about the history of their names and share that information with others. In kindergarten, we focus a lot on learning to spell and write our names. I think learning why we have our names and sharing that information would be a great activity for any classroom.

I liked seeing Nitza Hidalgo’s Levels of Culture explained. Reading these made me realize that I focus more on the concrete level with my teaching of multicultural education. I think that it is important for students to see that different cultures also have different beliefs and behaviors that can be very different from their own. I think this can be a challenge for teachers to teach because of the views of people in their school, parents in their class, and their own background. So many times my kindergarten students will become the best of friends with the person they sit with at their table. Some parents seem shocked when they finally meet this new best friend and see that this child is different from what they expected. I hope as a teacher that I can foster those relationships so my students can grow up without preconceived ideas about other cultures. When my son was five, we had just received our yearly boxes of Girl Scout Cookies. Our favorites are the Tagalongs. He was holding the boxes as we were driving home that day. He asked me what kind of cookies we had. I told him that they were cookies with peanut butter covered in chocolate. He said, “Oh I get it.” Confused, I asked him what he meant. He said, “On the box, one of the boys is covered with peanut butter and the other boy is covered in chocolate.” I was still confused until I brought in the cookies and saw what he meant. On the box of cookies there was an African American boy and a Caucasian boy.
What a great place our world would be if we could just see each other as peanut butter and chocolate!