We
can choose to be active in our influence of children's attitudes
towards anything. With a certain amount of encouragement from adults,
children will begin to process and develop their beliefs about
ethnicity, religion, and race. Without our encouragement and openness
they are unlikely to ask the prominent hard questions without or
prompting. It is definitely up to us to take the initiative to start
the hard conversations. Children care about all the injustices that
adults do, but we don't see them as important as they do. While they
go through the fighting about sharing toys and problems with cliques
as they get older, they take more interest in social issues. But
listening without judgement and talking openly with them we can learn
about the concerns of today's world and we can begin to help them find
the connection between their own life experiences and bigger social
life issues. But they will never make the connection and work through
their "stereotypes" if they do not feel safe enough to ask
and explore. I
think that incorporating multicultural lesson plans in the classroom
will help of awareness. Maybe every few weeks introduce a new ethnic
group or talk about a specific race group and what they have done for society. Being able to teach students what people of their race
accomplished in the past helps them be more proud of who they are and
might motivate them to work harder and succeed in life. As far as initiating conversations about race, watching the types of videos
that we have been watching in class is helpful. Race is a broad topic
and sometimes people don't know where to begin when trying to
initiate conversations about it. It's uncomfortable and they are
afraid of offending someone. But the specific issues in the videos
help students respond easier than a broad introduction of race.
I can't agree more with your introduction on how it's up to us as teachers and adults to Foster the hard conversations about racial inequality in the world. Children think about those issues earlier than most expect and it's up to us to make sure they can be as aware and fair as possible when making decisions on what they think. I also agree that multicultural education is important to the curriculum academically and important to the individual who represents that race or culture in your classroom. But why should we have it on a monthly basis? I believe true equity abandons the idea of having certain cultural learning experiences placed into time slots, while having standard (mainstream) curriculum all year. A perfect example is Black History Month. I think Black History month is crucial for all the reasons you listed but at the same time it's a disservice because Black studies should be an integrated part of the curriculum everyday. Just like any other cultural study. Failure to implement this into practice is a disservice to minority students in your classroom.
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