Multicultural Initiatives: Dorinda Carter - On Spotlighting and Ignoring Racial Group Members in the Classroom

What's this blog about?

I teach several courses under the broad topic of "Multicultural Education," prioritizing social justice issues of access, power/privilege, & narrowing the academic achievement gap. I am a person of color and I almost always have a white co-teacher. We include topics, such as: racism, sexism, heterosexism, ableism, ethnocentrism, deculturalization, transforming curriculum, etc. This is a place where I post information that we teach; lesson plans for activities; and resources we use and/or which are shared with me by my adult students.

Thursday, August 13, 2015

Dorinda Carter - On Spotlighting and Ignoring Racial Group Members in the Classroom

In a course, Building Bridges for Understanding, that my colleague, Elli Stern, and I teach, we ask participants (teachers, counselors, administrators, tutors, nurses, etc.) to get into a group and "become the expert" on an article that we have assigned for homework. To this end, we then ask the group to construct a graphic organizer, mnemonic, or other visual aid to help "teach" the other groups about the article.

By ignoring varying racial groups, teachers can miss the richness of diversity and the opportunity to strengthen every child’s identity. However, by noticing, one can end up "spotlighting."

We can not make assumptions regarding race for all our students. The key is ﬂexibility and mindfulness. Children will let you know how they are feeling as long as you remain open to listening and seeing what they are communicating to you. Awareness of racial diversity is important. It will help teachers to talk about multiple groups that contributed to U.S. history and culture, while being sensitive to not spotlighting any one child. As your repertoire grows, and diverse groups become more and more part of the curriculum and teaching. It’s important to include many, if not all, the ethnic and racial groups that contributed to our country. By inclusion of multiple perspectives, there is less of a need to highlight individual students.