University of Tennessee Multicultural Education Socioeconomic Issue of Poverty PPT

I currently teach in a Title 1 school in TN and is located in a poverty stricstricten area, so any of the examples that are given will work for this presentation presentation. More specifically the socioeconomic issues. I will provide the loglogin information to my online textbook when needed. 

Now that you have completed most of the course, you now understand that there are many issues in multicultural education. For this project, I want you to think specifically of your classroom or your future one. What issue in multicultural education do you see or foresee?

Some examples may include racism, microaggressions, white privilege, biased curricula, socioeconomic issues, classism, linguicism, ableism, religious intolerance, and different learning styles. You may choose one of the issues listed above, or you may choose your own (with the instructor’s approval).

Choose an issue in multicultural education

When using culturally responsive strategies while teaching, you will notice an increase of student effort, or at least it does in my classroom. When planning lessons for our students we try to always choose articles that our students can connect to, for example, when we learn about Martin Luther King, they are able to make comparisons to what life was like then compared to the way it is now due to the road he paved throughout his journey. We are able to make so many connections when we activate our students’ prior knowledge on topics as well as making the learning contextual. ( I feel like I need a better, more in depth example here about how he paved the way for our students today, thoughts??)Of course, our goal is to always create cultural democracies in our classrooms, where our students are continually interacting with a wide range of backgrounds, experiences, and realities and most importantly, create an environment where every student feels respected and proud of their heritage. By doing this, usually they feel safe enough to open up more about their personal lives and we have some of the most amazing discussions. I feel this allows me to build better relationships with my students as well. An example is when we read articles about migrant workers; black students and Hispanic students are able to engage in conversations about the power of overcoming stereotypes and segregation. While we do have a smaller Hispanic population, I do believe it is still important to include them because representation in literature matters, especially in middle school when students are working so hard to discover who they are.Besides representation, it is beneficial to include engaging lessons about topics they do not know as much about. An example is a research project based on an important figure during the  Harlem Renaissance. Each student had their own person and were responsible for completing a graphic organizer as well as a slide show to present to their peers about their person. While students are working, they were amazed by the amount of connections to current music, art, and performances and were able to find other significant social connections as well.