Prompt 3- Embracing the Linguistic, Ethnic, and Sociocultural Characteristics of the Students

Providence West High School is a very diverse school. With the exception of one student, Mr. B. and I are the only full Caucasians in both of the class rooms I tutor in. Whereas at first I viewed this as a challenge, Mr. B. helped me learn to embrace it through his methods.

One of the dominant languages, even though this was an English class, was Spanish. The majority of the children in both classes, if not fluent, could understand and get by with the knowledge they had of the language. For someone like me that was a challenge, I took 4 years of French in high school and only know Spanish as far as Hola! Como esta? The students, however, would walk into class fully conversing in a language completely foreign to me, as well as Mr. B. He, instead of just banning Spanish from the classroom, learned to integrate it into their studies. The book they were reading all quarter was The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. Written from the point of view of a little girl growing up in the Latino neighborhood of Chicago, Cisneros studded her vignettes with Spanish words, as well as Latino culture. Mr. B. used this as a chance to embrace the students’ knowledge of the language and culture, as well as embrace the general themes of growing up that are universal to everyone.

To me, this goes hand in hand with Dennis Carlson’s call for a multicultural education. While Carlson specifically addresses the gayness issue, and the teaching of that, his five principles can be applied when it comes to teaching anything other then the Anglo-American culture. I especially want to address the last two principles Carlson addresses; the need for multicultural education to be directed at helping young people build alliances and see the connection between different areas of their identities and culture, and that multicultural education must become a place where all people can heard and their “truths” are understood as from a certain time and a certain place. By reading Cisneros’ book, the students bonded over similar experiences of the pressures of growing up, but also in the experiences of that Latino identity, so many of them share, and the stereo types and pressures that go with it. They learned that there are writers from all different walks of life, not just those “old, dead, white guys” as one student put it.