Teaching Multicultural Children

I wanted to start today's blog by posting a great clip on the English Language from I love Lucy

This week’s reading focused on teaching English as a second language. As a bilingual person and someone who had to learn English in Kindergarten, I was struck by both articles. I started by reading “Teaching Multicultural Children by Virginia Collier. I have often imagined how hard it would be to teach English as a second language to children. Collier states that “teachers must be creative and flexible, serve as a catalyst for discovery as students learn to operate effectively in their multiple worlds, be able to meditate and resolve intercultural conflicts, keep students on task and serve as a support base.

The article uses guidelines to teach students who are learning English as a second language.

1.      Be aware that children use first language acquisition strategies for learning English as a second language.  This guideline focuses on the belief that students use the same strategies in learning a language that they used when learning their first language. They strategically identify patterns in the language, they find ways of identifying the nuances in the language and “they take risks to try to use the analogies of the first language”

2.      Do not consider yourself as a remedial teacher expected to correct so—called deficiencies of your students.  (this guideline I really had a tough time understanding) it states that “the difficulty with teaching languages to native speakers is that teachers have been trained to teach them as foreign languages. I really need help understanding this and hope we discuss this guideline in class.

3.      Don’t teach a second language in any way that challenges or seeks to eliminate the first language. This rule really resonated with me as I feel that it is the most important rule. We must teach students to not forget about their first language or that their first language is wrong. We must recognize their bi-dialectism. “to affirm their home language means that they will not be told that they are wrong or that what they say is vulgar or wrong”. I wonder what Delpit would say about the past statement. I feel that she would give Ms Colier a high five and they would be best friends.

4.      Teach the standard form of English and students’ home language together with an appreciation of dialect differences to create an environment of language recognition in the classroom. And then Delpit would abruptly end their friendship after Ms Colier brings up this guideline. This guideline advocates that teachers who teach English should use the student’s dialect in their classes in order to enrichen the classroom and make the students feel that they are represented. “So when children come to their classrooms with their non-standard varieties of English and home language, teachers must look at the benefits of having multiple ways of talking in the classroom.” Delpit would disagree, I feel, because of she would want the students to explicitly learn the language of the culture of power.

5.      Do not forbid young students from code switching in the classroom. Understand the function that code switching serves. 

Safe Spaces

This weeks reading focused on creating a safe and conducive learning environment for LGBT youth. Safe Spaces: Making Schools and Communities Welcoming for LGBT youth brought up many things that I have not thought about when it comes to the challenges that  LGBT youth face in the classroom and in their environments. In order to understand the challenges I thought it was pertinent to find facts about LGBT youth in America. I have attached
them on the margins of this blog post.

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 The info-graphics just represent what is very clear about american culture, America has a hetero-sexist problem. I believe that most of our education on acceptance of others comes from human interaction. As unfortunate as it is people tend to only care about something until it becomes personal. We can read about the marginalized communities, discuss their plights and even sympathize for their struggles but for a lot of people until they know someone in that marginalized community and have interacted with that person, broken bread with them learned with them that is when a deeper level of understanding occurs. Our education system is at a crossroads in educating students about LGBT issues, and although it seems as though things are getting better, The suicide rate and homelessness rates for LGBT youth are too high. This brings me back to
this week's reading. The authors argue that "children encounter cultural and ethnic norms different from those of their family. If our homes are incubators, keeping our children safe as they grow into patterns of family life, schools are outcubators places that introduce new ways of thinking and behaving". With this statement the author begin to introduce the biggest problem plaguing the LGBT youth in America. The place were students learn things different than the way

that they are brought up is failing to introduce the LGBT community and thus creating an othering of their community. The "word curriculum derives from a word in Latin that means "to run a race" the authors argue that in a race there are winners and losers and that "We contend that the winners are those who see themselves in textbooks, art, films, and other educational materials. Youth who see themselves as wise or powerful main characters or heroes

worthy of celebration and emulation will feel validated included and safe inside their classrooms."  If students that represent them are not represented in their curriculum than there is an alienation and a lack of ownership in their education. I have felt like that before with no authors of colors in my English classes in high school, however, ( and this is where my heterosexual privilege lies) if a teacher were to advocate for her class to read more students of color, there would be very little red tape to climb as opposed to reading about characters of different sexual orientation/ gender identity.