How do we do this- for real?

This week we spent time getting a taste of what students labeled different feel when immersed into a class in which their first language isn't spoken. Although the class activity was very humorous it was was also insightful. Even for myself, I am of West Indian descent, when Prof. Smith began instructing in Patwa, I thought to myself, she has officially lost her mind. I mean I could clearly understand what she was instructing us to do, but I wondered how everyone else would make out, I even tried to "translate" at some points. And even though I understood her fine I was reluctant to raise my hand and respond because after all, my imitation Patwa stinks and I was intimidated to make an ass of myself. Although I took the message away of what a student labeled different goes through in the US school system, I also saw what not to do when trying to bring multiculturalism into the classroom. Linguistically different students have a very hard time learning when transitioning into a system that expects them to learn a new language while concurrently learning a new language. Logically this makes no sense, as a result students tend to fall behind, not because they aren't capable of the work, but because they are unable to communicate what they know.

We began to speak on what are some ways to practically introduce and maintain multiculturalism in the classroom. It think it is first essential to understand that as Tenorio said children aren't too young to have "real conversations" about race and bias. The truth of the matter is that they are learning these things at very early ages, this was evident in their responses. I think that the earlier you begin to address these issues, the easier we can begin to irradiate racist ideas and bias. I think my favorite activity from the Wu reading this week was the Me Pockets, in which the students were asked to take home plastic sleeves and fill it with anything that says me! This activity not only brought knowledge to the other students in the class, it also aided in reaffirming the students identity. Even the "Let's Talk About Skin" candidly revealed the way children are affected by issues of race, and how they were being impressed upon at such an early age.

We began to discuss the ways in which we would deal with multiculturalism in the classroom if we were teachers. This is something I struggled with but with some more time to think, I came up with a few things that support multiculturalism in the classroom setting:


HELLO- this i would use for grade school children. Each day the students would be required to great the classroom by saying "Hello my name is...." in a different language. If there is a native speaker in the class, they would develop a "lesson" for the class and teach some words in their language. This again promotes and reaffirms the students home culture by bringing it into the classroom and showing the student that their culture is indeed important.

URBAN IQ TEST- tests don't usually test students on relevant things. IQ tests are rarely if ever made with culturally diversity in mind. I found a test called the Redden-Simmons Rap Test. Although the language is a bit outdated I would incorporate this into a lesson with either JHS or HS students.
http://wilderdom.com/personality/intelligenceReddon-SimonsRapTest.html 

PROVERBS- this one I found online. It's goal is to show students that people from different cultures and backgrounds share a lot of the same morals and beliefs. It's explained in the pdf on the link below on page 7&8. pubs.cas.psu.edu/FreePubs/pdfs/ui335.pdf