I started reading a book about multicultural teaching. I am trying to get a bit ahead for the upcoming semester. I know if I don't do a little prep now the summer will come and go before I realize and I will start off behind in my work.
I was reading through the preface; the book is a new edition and I wanted to get an idea of what changes had been made. The author made a point about instructors needing to realize that there is also a culture of gender. I never thought of gender as a culture, but her point made a lot of sense. We seem to see the obvious differences of race and ethnicity. However, within these broader categories there is also a distinct issue of gender. This is most especially apparent when dealing with an Islamic culture. In my last post I wrote briefly about the two young Muslim women who received awards at the local university. After reading through the beginning of this new book, I came to realize that in addition to the challenges to overcome stereotypes that these young women had to face; their instructors had to work equally as hard overcoming their own biases. I thought about how I might overcome some of the religiously based gender issues when preparing a lesson plan. Of course, female students from other cultures have issues to overcome, but it is most glaring in the case of Muslim women. I admit I am not an expert, but there has to be topics and even types of drills that might simply be offensive to a woman of Islamic faith. I know in the strictest sense there are cases where Muslim women and men simply do not participate in classes together. So, the question is, how do I accommodate something like this and still teach to my other students; especially males from the same background or from backgrounds diametrically opposed to Muslim culture? It become a very fine line. I like to think that any good instructor can and will adapt. Yet, what is our requirement to do so and to what degree? In the end do we go with gender based classes. I know when I was a child we would separate for our annual "sex" talks. Boys always seemed to get a coach and I have no idea who taught the girls. I think there may come a period of time when something like this is done for more types of classes than just sex education. Until then we seem stuck between the proverbial "rock and a hard place".
The text also mentioned the increasing rise in the immigrant make-up of our educational population; especially in public schools. I think we will approach about 40% of K-12 students being from immigrant families by 2020. I don't have the text here, so I may be off a bit in my numbers. I will try to look it up and correct the number when I get a chance.
The beauty of blogging is that one can do it on one's smart phone as I am doing with this post. However, I don't generally carry texts with me while doing normal, routine tasks.
Anyway, back to the topic. I thought for a few days about how I might accommodate a student from a unique cultural background? The simple answer is that I don't know. I do know that I would try my best and perhaps seek out some help from a more experience educator. Ideally, I might go to an educator of the same cultural background. It might be easiest to do that, but I doubt if some small town teacher from a rural area would have as easy a time finding help as I might. I think the first step is to simply be aware that this type of situation is on the rise and try to educate ourselves before it happens to us. From there I would try to adapt lesson plans to meet the needs of the student or students in need. Again, I think there might be significant work involved, but it is certainly something that can be done.
The next big question for me is how far would I go to accommodate a single student over a class of say 20 other students. This is where the "fine line" comes in. I truly think it is a potentially messy situation to go too far in one or the other direction. Obviously experience helps, but in the end the individual teacher has to make some choices.
Perhaps ask yourself the same question. Would you be able to change from what has worked well for you in the past and accept the challenge to adapt?
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