Resource: Building Blocks: The First Steps of Creating a Multi-cultural Classroom

 Fish introduces his article with the notion that America’s public schools have not generally been very welcoming of diversity.  Teachers with students from distinct cultures must not ignore diversity but instead combine it into their curriculum.  The most critical thing in teaching to a multicultural classroom is to keep an open mind by avoiding making assumptions about any student’s values or culture.  Teachers must be willing to openly discuss cultural differences among their students.  For teachers who have ESL students in their classroom, it is a sign of respect to learn some words in those students’ native languages, even if it is just “thank you.”  Content from different cultures should be a part of the curriculum every day.  The most valuable information perhaps in this article is the list of six principles for evaluating a multicultural classroom by Boutte and McCormick.  The list stresses creating an honest, real, and respectful multicultural environment.  One key to creating real multicultural classrooms is to avoid evaluations that bias towards one culture or another.  It is important to recognize all cultures.  This article uses some realistic portrayals of the types of cultural differences one might experience, such as the difference between a Vietnamese and an Israeli student.  It seems to offer sound advice on dealing with such diversity in the classroom.  The author cites several major research studies in drawing his conclusions, and it seems to me that these ideas are especially critical in a foreign language classroom like mine, where culture is always intertwined with language.   

Work cited:

Fish, Larri.  “Building Blocks: The First Steps of Creating a Multi-cultural Classroom.”

            The Research Room: EdChange Multicultural Pavilion.  4 December 2007.

            <http://www.edchange.org/multicultural/papers/buildingblocks.html>