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Multicultural Education 2014
Welcome to the spring 2014 semester of Multicultural Education!
The course is structured to recognize and explore a set of key tensions within and surrounding the contested areas of multicultural and peace and conflict education:
o identity/sameness and diversity/difference
o dialogue and silence
o peace and conflict
o culture and the individual psyche
The impact of multicultural education on students' perceptions of power and inequality
Password-protected file of readings
Posting Instructions
Once you are registered for the class, you will be given an on-line account,
and received an e-mail from the site administrator, with an assigned username and password.
Use those to log in to the course website.
Give some careful consideration to the matters of the username and avatar which will appear w/ each of your postings:
After logging in, you may click on "my account" and change your username to something of your choice.
Think about whether you want your words associated w/ your (full/partial/symbolic/pseudo-) name,
and whether you will want it so associated in 1, 2, 5 years....the content will remain on-line long after you've left the College.
To upload your avatar--a picture of yourself/symbol of your way of thinking/habit of being--
go to "My account" --> "Edit" --> "Upload picture," and follow the instructions there.
ALWAYS LOG IN BEFORE you post, so that what you have written will appear automatically and immediately
(otherwise, due to the need for spam control, it will need to be individually vetted, and so delayed).
Our online forum
This is a space for sharing your thoughts, questions, observations in your life and specifically in your field placements. At times you'll be responding to specific prompts, while at other times you'll be invited to use this as a kind of intellectual playspace to try out ideas, respond to others' postings, offer resources related to our work together...
Multicultural Education syllabus
Education 260
Multicultural Education: Local and Global Perspectives
Spring 2014
Additional Reading and Resources
I have put together this section because so much external reading informed what I ultimately wrote, and I wanted to share those resources with others. The following resources are broken up into three categories: News Articles, Activist Blogs and Archives, and Books by Academics. All of the quotations from the narratives are included in the relevant resource category.
News Articles
In 2007, following an incident of racial insensitivity and ignorance at Bryn Mawr College and a postering campaign on race at Haverford College, several articles in the Bi-College News discussed the way race is experienced within the Bi-Co:
Heller, J. (2007, May 1). Profs Organize Race Discussion at HC – The Bi-College News. Retrieved May 15, 2014, from http://www.biconews.com/2007/05/01/profs-organize-race-discussion-at-hc/
Milne, A. (2007, April 17). Students Call for SGA Treasurer’s Resignation – The Bi-College News. Retrieved May 15, 2014, from
http://www.biconews.com/2007/04/17/students-call-for-sga-treasurers-resignation/
Vasko, L. (2007, May 11). Social Justice in the Bi-Co – The Bi-College News. Retrieved May 15, 2014, from http://www.biconews.com/2007/05/11/social-justice-in-the-bi-co-3/
Then last year (2012-13) protests and discussion occurred surrounding the closing of Perry House at Bryn Mawr. A letter from several students on the closure was featured in the Bi-College News:
Walkout
Forward
Writing about anti-racist activism felt relevant and pressing at a time when my own college, along with many other colleges, is in the midst of discussions about increasingly visible diversity on campus. Mount Holyoke has recently dealt with a publicized instance of racism by their campus police against a student of color,[1] and in response students of color have launched a campaign called “#mohonest” [2]. Wesleyan is now in the midst of protests regarding the gradual loss of faculty from their African American Studies department[3]. Students at countless schools are launching “#I too Am…” campaigns, inspired by Harvard students, to highlight the membership of students of color in their college communities[4]. I wanted to write this piece to explore the ways institutional racism impacts people on traditionally white college campuses in different ways. I also wanted to look at the way anti-racist activism can become the center of one’s experience in a space, or can be a marginal or even completely absent part of one’s experience.
Understanding Identity and the Latino Diaspora in Middle School
Emily Crispell
Multicultural Education
Final Field Paper
May 8, 2014
Understanding Identity and the Latino Diaspora in Middle School
Interesting Article Re: Race @ Bryn Mawr
http://articles.philly.com/1993-05-09/news/25964426_1_minority-students-financial-aid-first-generation-students
Inquiry Project: Teaching English Abroad as a Person of Color
One of my post-undergrad dreams is to find a way back to France, a country in which I had the opportunity to study abroad junior year. I figured that teaching English would be a way to gain experience in a classroom, keep myself immersed in French culture, and have the chance to explore other parts of Europe as well. Gaining an understanding about the White-Savior Industrial Complex, though, had me questioning my initial desires of wanting to teach English abroad. Did I want to teach abroad with the mentality of “helping” and “making a difference”? Did I subconsciously crave this opportunity as a way to please my ego? How might my own privileges as an American impact my pedagogy in the classroom, and relationship with the community? How would they differ if I were not a woman of color? These kinds of questions inspired my inquiry project into the implications and experiences of Americans teaching abroad.
BlackinAsia and English as a Tool of Imposition
Increasing Latino Parental Involvement through Parental Partnerships with Schools
Emily Crispell
Multicultural Education
Inquiry Project
April 17, 2014
Increasing Latino Parental Involvement through Parental Partnerships with Schools
Introduction
Exploring Multiple and Intersecting Identities: Themes and Suggestions for Action
Exploring Multiple and Intersecting Identities:
Themes and Suggestions for Action
Hummingbird, Kma, and Cece Lee
Introduction
In Spring 2013, students working with Professors Jody Cohen and Alison Cook-Sather began facilitating focus groups to explore the way Bryn Mawr was supporting and could better support its increasingly diverse student population. This semester the three co-writers of this paper joined those facilitating focus groups as fellow student facilitators. While the groups were originally focused on the experiences of international students, we’ve broadened them this semester to look at all students on campus and their varied identities – acknowledging that even domestically we have a very diverse student population and that all members of our community face different challenges because of the way they identify themselves and feel perceived by others.
Project Based Learning and its Implications in a Multicultural Mathematics Classroom
Project Based Learning and its Implications in a Multicultural Mathematics Classroom
When I was a junior in high school, I was placed into AP Calculus. On the first day of classes, I came to that particular class to find that my favorite math teacher, Mr. Best[i], was the instructor for this years AP class. He began the class explaining that we will be preparing for the AP examination in June, as well as preparing a final exit project. He went on to explain that we would be having two assessments: a midterm and a final, as well as this project. Our grade would consist of the two exam grades as well as the project grade, attendance, participation and homework completeness. He began to give us examples of projects that students completed in the past, and told us that literally anything is “fair game” as long as you’re able to describe it using mathematics.
First Generation College Students Who are Second Generation Immigrants
Racism is defined by Tara Yosso in her study, “Whose Culture Has Capital? A Critical Race Theory Discussion of Community Cultural Wealth”, as “a system of ignorance, exploitation and power used to oppress African Americans, Latinos, Asians, Pacific Americas, American Indians, and other people on the basis of ethnicity, culture, mannerisms, and color” (72). In history, we tend to see racism within the “black/white dichotomy”, but this two-way understanding of racism does not allow for the multiplicity of oppression that is experienced by many others. I believe this is a fitting place to start as I hope to analyze just some of the research surrounding how students of color, particularly 2nd generation immigrants of various countries fair in the education system as well as how they might experience college as a 1st generation college student.
White Youth and Hip-Hop
In David Nurenberg’s article “What Does Injustice Have to do With Me? A Pedagogy of the Privileged” the educator discusses his experience being raised in the upper middle class, while being knowledgeable about the hardships his Jewish family members encountered. He discusses his own accounts of harassment growing up, and brings readers into his struggle of teaching suburban white privileged students multicultural education and social justice education. “I specifically wanted to work with a suburban population, with the young people who would grow up into the college roommates and friends I had known and who had frustrated me… I felt I could act as some sort of bridge between the worlds to which my parents had exposed me to, and the one that produced the CEO’s and policy makers who I believed unwittingly perpetuated this unfair system.” (Nurenberg 53) This paper will act as spokes around this quote and highlight other figures who share this ideology and act as ‘bridges’ in the context of white consumers of Hip Hop industry, and what multicultural education can do for the white, privileged, and impressionable.
"but math is just fancy common sense" - my math professor
Christine Newville
Inquiry Project
Multicultural Education
4/18/2014
I’m Not a Math Person
Inquiry Project- Creating a Curriculum
Overview:
This curriculum is designed for a pre-kindergarten classroom (ages 3-5 years old) with a student population of 23 students. A bilingual literacy curriculum will be designed for immigrants or children of immigrants from Mexico. The students speak predominately Spanish. The parents of these students speak very little English, so the students cannot use their parents as a resource to learn English. The class meets five times per week for five hours. This is the second semester of the school year. By the time the students’ progress to kindergarten, the students will be expected to understand English because in kindergarten, only English will be spoken. In this curriculum, in addition to learning the basics of reading and math, there will be activities that will incorporate two main goals: To have the students understand English without losing their identity and to incorporate culture into the student’s learning.
In semester one, the teacher spoke both English and Spanish. However, in this semester, there will be a bigger focus on English, since this is the only language that will be spoken in kindergarten. The average length of a school year is 180 days, so these three units will take place for 30 days during the semester two.
Reading/Literacy
Objective:
- Learn the letters of the alphabet
- Begin to recognize their sounds