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.