School Involvement

Multiculturalism must go beyond the individual and the classroom, but rather into the school environment as a whole. In order to ensure an inviting and stimulating multicultural atmosphere within your school: educators, administrators, and students must be willing to share the responsibility of maintaining a culturally and socially relevant pedagogy.  Below, educators and administrators can find a plethora of resources to begin assessing their school environment and begin implementing multicultural curriculum.

The levels of multicultural education:

Adapted from: (Nieto, S. & Bode, P. 2012)

1. Tolerance- “To be tolerant means having the capacity to bear something, although at times it may be unpleasant.”
2. Acceptance- “If we accept differences, at the very least, we recognize their significance.”
3. Respect- “Respect is to admire and hold in high esteem. When diversity is respected it is used as the basis for much of the education offered.”
4. Affirmation, Solidarity, Critique- “...based on the premise that the highest level of learning occurs when students work through their differences...conflict is not avoided, but accepted as an inescapable part of learning.”

                                                                       

8 Characteristics of a Multicultural School

Adapted from: (Nieto, S. & Bode, P. 2012)

IDEAS FOR SCHOOLS TO BECOME MORE MULTICULTURAL

-Creating a multicultural education policy statement

-Multicultural curriculum should begin during early education

-Multicultural classroom audit

-Require a diverse reading list in the curriculum that demonstrates the universal human experience across cultures

-Go beyond your textbooks by including current events and news stories that relate to your lesson. Also, provide multiple viewpoints from all cultures and groups of people that may have been involved in the event you are teaching about.

-Panels / Guest speakers

-High expectations regardless of cultural background

-Multicultural clubs/extra curricular activities that encourage all students to participate

-Professional development for teachers and staff

Activity 1:

This activity can be helpful in identifying where social boundaries lie and can start a discussion as to why they exist and ideas to help break these boundaries up.

Social Boundaries Activity: Map It Out

Instructions

For one week, observe your school's hallways, common areas and seating arrangements in classrooms and the cafeteria, paying attention to how students are grouped.

Teachers should first sketch the school's social boundaries, identifying where social cliques hang out. Then students will sketch the school. Compare the viewpoints.

• Did you map the school differently?
• How were groups labeled? Did the labels vary? Why?
• What did the students notice that the teacher didn't? Why might this be?
• Did individual students notice different things? Why might this be?
• What did the teacher notice that the students didn't notice? Why might this be?
• What have you learned about labels and your perspective?
• Does this information challenge any assumptions you may have had?
• What can you change in your classroom and school to reflect this new information?

Retrieved from: http://www.tolerance.org/activity/social-boundaries-activity-map-it-out

This link will take you to article with 6 lessons for schools and educators to take away from an incident in Jena, Louisiana from 2006. Along with the article is a survey to examine your school’s climate. This is a great place to begin the process of correcting your school's environment by learning what areas need to be improved to be more multicultural and open to all students.

http://www.tolerance.org/sites/default/files/general/tt_lessons_from_jena.pdf 

(Multicultural Benchmarks, 2001).

Activity 2:

Color Theory Diversity Lesson

Instructions:

Have every member of the school: teachers, administrators, staff, personnel, and students mix skin-tone paints to best match their skin color.

After everyone has successfully discovered their skin-tone, have them make hand prints of their color and display them around the school to show how diverse your population can be.



Video About a School Integrating a Multicultural Project

References

Multicultural Benchmarks. (2001). Retrieved from 
http://www.intime.uni.edu/multiculture/school/benchmarks.htm#Policy Statement

Nieto, S. & Bode, P. (2012). Affirming diversity: The sociopolitical context of multicultural education. 
New York: Longman.