I Follow A Banks Approach To Multicultural Education

Scenario #3

The standards for Communities in the first grade incorporate four parts: history, civics and government, geography, and economics. These parts are studied so that students can begin to develop an understanding of their role in their own communities and how those roles affect others. Because Mary is ENL, it is a fair guess that her original culture may be different from the one she is currently living in. This would be my first goal: to figure out her native culture as well as language. Afterward, I would follow a Banks approach to multicultural education to help Mary bridge the gap between her two cultures.

Multiculturalism is not an easy task and has several steps. The first step is to integrate, this is the bare minimum. It’s

This is when I would have Mary draw connections to her community and see if there are implicit cultural assumptions that she may have that are not accurate to the standards I am teaching. Assumptions for the teachers and for the students can and will range. In the case of Mary, learning about the community and her civic duties may seem strange and unrelatable because her parents are not assimilated or because she comes from Asia and the cultural duties have a strong contrast to what she is experiencing at the school. Without a strong cultural competence and understanding for her own culture, students like Mary may struggle with school (Teachers, Schools, and Society, 80) It is during this part that I would frontload vocabulary and deconstruct different terms so that Mary can understand what the authors meant by certain terms. Words are often heavily loaded with many values and assumptions. It is for this reason that they must be handled close to the very beginning to get rid of misconceptions and spark curiosity (Banks,

This teaching means that teachers (such as myself) must teach to the students without being partial to one group over the other, keeping in mind their many different ways of learning. If Mary comes from a more collectivist community/ household, she may not understand the more individualistic mindset of the United states. This could be addressed in many ways such as acknowledging the differences to teach her about the U.S. Comparing and contrasting, giving more group work to the class, etc. Additionally, an effective teacher will teach in order to enable the student to learn more effectively using the “Multicultural Atom” which is addressing the ways students learn based on their culture in addition to their own individual learning styles (Banks, 2). For Mary, I would use her styles in addition to her culture. Researching the culture that she is from and finding research-based methods of teaching that culture, if applicable. This does not mean that I would be stereotyping, but rather modifying my own teaching style to create a more inviting and better space for Mary and the other students to learn and develop the further understanding for both cultures and communities by providing a variety of strategies to cater to a diverse setting of students. Furthermore, the curriculum itself will be changed to let students view issues, concepts, perspectives, and themes so that they can can learn and eventually take