Teaching Teachers to Teach Multi-Culturally

"Teachers must not merely take courses that tell them how to treat their students as multicultural clients, in other words, those that ell them how to identify differences in interactional or communicative strategies and remediate appropriately. They must also learn about the brilliance the students bring with them 'in their blood.' Until they appreciate the wonders of the cultures represented before them -- and they cannot do that without extensive study most appropriately begun in college-level courses -- they cannot appreciate the potential of those who sit before them, nor can they begin to link their students' histories and worlds to the subject matter they present in the classroom." (Delpit, 182)

For the most part I agree with what Delpit says here, but in some sense I don't think her expectations are realistic. Sure, it would be great if all teachers were prepared to teach in a multi-cultural setting, both through college coursework and personal study, but I think about the backgrounds of most of the people in the Luther teacher education program and it seems a little hard to put those expectations on today's graduates.

Let's face it, a small liberal arts college in the midwest isn't the most diverse campus you'll come across. And most of the students here (not all, but quite a few) come from towns and schools where the majority of the students were white and middle class. Naturally, these future teachers need more preparation than their own "real life" experiences in order to teach multi-cultural students. However, when I think about it, we are only required to take one class that centers on diverse learners (Ed 221). While that course was enlightening and certainly informative, it didn't specifically connect multi-cultural education with my own subject matter, and there are no music ed courses that revolve solely around diverse learners. In this case, Luther education students are then expected to gain further knowledge about diverse classrooms through personal experience. But how many of us are going to find that in our student teaching experiences in the midwest?

Granted, a lot of this is based on generalization, but I guess I just find it hard to apply Delpit's "solution" to an area of the country where it may be difficult to gain access to diverse learning experiences and integrate those into teaching.

Entry #1

(Pardon the title. I couldn't think of a concise one, so I went with boring.)

The selections we read from the "Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs to the Secretary of the Interior" (Years 1885 and 1890) really struck a chord with me. Throughout the course of my education, I've always been shocked and horrified by the way our country treated Native Americans over history, and this just added fuel to the fire.

While the entire thing angered me, I found one section especially ridiculous, especially in light of what we had read by Lisa Delpit:

"All instruction must be in the English language. Pupils must be compelled to converse with each other in English, and should be properly rebuked or punished for persistent violation of this rule. Every effort should be made to encourage them to abandon their tribal language."

I guess what struck me about this particular passage is the fact that the report isn't even disguising what they're doing. The tribal languages must be "abandoned"? Obviously, our society has come a long way since 1890 and this level of explicit cultural ignorance isn't a problem anymore, but I think Delpit would argue that it is still happening, just not overtly. I hope that you wouldn't be able to find a statement with wording like this in any of today's government documents. But students of other cultures are still forced to adopt a form of English they are not used to using and this can lead to educational dissonance and many of the other problems Delpit mentions.

Looking forward to more things to blog about as the semester continues!