Culture in the classroom

1. Culture in the classroom Vanessa Carter Shahzana Merchant Lynn Brady Katie Nunn

2. What is a diverse/multicultural classroom? • Does not focus just on race of students but also their ethnicity, age, gender, religion, nationality, sexual orientation, culture, socioeconomic status, physical and/or learning ability.

3. How can I get to know my students? • Work to gather information about students early on in the course so that we can better meet their learning needs and our goals for learning.

4. How does one teach to include diverse perspectives? • Teaching from a multicultural point of view requires us to take a critical look at the overall goals of learning in our classroom • Ask yourself questions about what you want your class to learn

5. Culture in a classroom • Family stories project • Biliteracy • Funds of knowledge • Social and cultural tool • Working together to create “zone of proximal development” • Use of thinking and communicating skills

6. Design and use of technology in cultural aspect • Support Engagement and Motivation • Cultural modeling prior knowledge • Metacognitive conversations

7. Instructional Recommendations #1: Recognize students for who they are • acknowledge their background and origin • -they are “both, and” and not “neither, nor” • -bilingual and biculture and such terms are umbrella terms can be misleading

8. #2: Students should be recognized as students who want and need to read and write • reading and writing are valuable parts of their lives • they may be reading and writing to help various family members • also helps develop their identities • outside literacy involvement may be more complex than that in the classroom • to know literacy is used in a child’s life and community, there must be a two-way conversation

9. #3: Students should be encouraged to fully develop literacies that are not traditionally part of curriculum • “language brokers” of oral and written text • teach siblings • dependent upon the child’s biculture and bilingual development • support bilingualism and biculturalism, not monolingualism or monoculturalism • forced assimilation does fundamental damage to the sense of self and identity

10. “Respond to Stories with Stories: Teachers Discuss Multicultural Children’s Literature” • Educators' insights and understandings of different ethnic groups have been greatly enhanced by exploring the richly authentic multicultural literature for children. • Literature discussion groups are great because they serve as a way to teacher’s to encourage reading of multicultural literature. • Literature discussion groups are a source of cultural understandings in classrooms.

11. Starting a literature discussion group that involves multi-ethnic literature gives children the opportunity to: • Consider the power of children’s literature by electing new perspectives on culture. • Participate in dialogue about their thoughts and challenge their thinking about culturally patterned expectations.

12. The most important way to encourage reading of multicultural literature is by keeping a wide variety of books in the classroom, being an avid reader, and thinking aloud about one's own questions to show that one values such literature. • Stories are a means of response, and a way to interpret the literature we read and a structure for sharing it with others.

13. References Teaching Tips for the Success of All Students in a Diverse Classroom, n.d. PDF file by Christine A. Stanley “It’s a difference that changes us”: An alternative view of the language and literacy learning needs of Latina/o students by Robert T. Jimenez 2001 Mathis, J. (2001). Respond to Stories with Stories: Teachers Discuss Multicultural Children's Literature. EBSCO HOST, 92(4), 6.