Bill asked: I was looking back at topics we wanted to be sure to discuss this year (we've got five months, I want to be sure to touch on them all) and noticed the following suggestion: "strategies on scaffolding instruction with a focus in cultural diversity."
Those of us who teach in culturally diverse schools, what are we doing to scaffold instruction for our learners? What do we perceive their needs to be?" I work at a K-5 school that is culturally diverse - I think we have 22 countries represented with 96 kids. There is less social-economic diversity as our mission to to help close the achievement gap for low-income, minority students. The topic of multicultural education is big for us, and studying out multicultural practices is one of three school-wide goals this year. Last September the whole faculty attended a 1-day workshop with Enid Lee on multicultural learning. We are following up this workshop with monthly meetings; our first goal was to raise awareness among the faculty of sensitive racial/cultural issues to foster openness and trust. The second goal is brainstorm ways to help our students navigate the inevitable racist undercurrents in our society and to give them voice and confidence in who they are. We are reading sections of Dr. Lee's book, *Beyond Heroes and Holidays. *A third goal is to closely study our curriculum to see if it adequately represents voices that speak to our students' heritages. The nagging question is do we celebrate "Black History" month or do we make sure that black history is seamlessly woven into the curriculum? I fear that we are not yet at the point where our curriculum is inclusive enough to forgo black history month o women' history month, etc. Meg _______________________________________________ The Literacy Workshop ListServ http://www.literacyworkshop.org To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/lit_literacyworkshop.org. Search the LIT archives at http://snipurl.com/LITArchive
