One sentence in the Chan article stood out for me. "The curriculum may be perceived as the intersection of school narratives and histories that differ significantly for students, teachers, and parents". So whose curriculum is it? Does the state own it because it is tested? Does the teacher own it because they teach it? Does the student own it because they learn it? Does the parent own it because they pay for it? To me the sentence from the article says we all own it and we all bring our perspective to the table. What we need to do as educators is work to make sure each perspective is at the table and participating in their own way. Curriculum should not be set in stone, it should be a fluid work that allows for adaptation, extension and redesign if necessary. During my time as a Media Coordinator, my school hosted many multi-culture nights, but it was always the same. Music did a dance from a different country, foreign language did the dress of the another nation and blah, blah, blah. Not exactly exciting for the families, whose kids were not apart of the presentation. Our principal could never understand why our Hmong, and Hispanic families were not participating. My thought was we were pandering to their culture. Several teachers and I took the program over and instead of highlighting the students, we visited the parents and asked them what they wanted to see, hear, learn and share. Several Hmong parents got together and presented the Hmong story cloth. They explained the cloths depicted people's life stories, and that this was a way of preserving oral traditions for future generations. We also had a parent share the American quilt and how it related to the culture of the mountains. We had several presentations all given by the parents in some cases translated for the audience by students. The quilt and the story cloth still hang in the media center for everyone to see and share. The night was successful, I think because we ventured outside our culture safety zone to talk with parents, to be open to new ideas and to have parents be apart of the evening. This became an annual event.
Melanie
Comments (4)
It seems like getting the parents involved really helps in bridging the gap between cultures. Great example
Posted by Danielle | June 15, 2009 4:25 PM
Posted on June 15, 2009 16:25
I love the collaborative approach! It's unfortunate how often we talk about about inclusivity, while obviously excluding significant would-be participants.
Posted by marisa | June 15, 2009 5:36 PM
Posted on June 15, 2009 17:36
Getting parents involved... While this is certainly what should happen and what would be helpful to the situation, it seems difficult to get some parents interested in their child's education at all. I have realized this first hand as I have gotten to know the Early College students with which I work. There are many of them whose parents don't care about their attendance, grades, behavior, future ,etc. much less their cultural sensitivity or cultural literacy. In some cases the indifference results from the heavy weight of worrying about where the next meal will come from, how the electricity bill will get paid, how to manage with a boken down car, etc. Can we really blame those parents for indifference to cultural literacy (and all the other)?
Posted by Christy Forrest | June 15, 2009 8:52 PM
Posted on June 15, 2009 20:52
Excellent Point Christy.
Posted by Melanie Honeycutt | June 17, 2009 9:19 AM
Posted on June 17, 2009 09:19