Home | How It Works | Stats Login | Register         Case: De-emphasize Differences. I was recently assigned to the middle school in the Warren School District. The district serves a community that had once been an all-white middle-class enclave, but has recently become more diverse in its ethnic makeup. I am very interested in multicultural education. I instituted the use of dialog journals in my adviser group, telling the students that they can write anything they want. Some journal entries cause me concern. Warren Jackson, an African American, complains that my emphasis on African American culture embarrasses him. Gail Smith, a white girl, writes that her parents object strongly to her affection for Warren Jackson and that she is considering suicide. My problems come to a head in my first meeting with the principal. The principal suggests that I decrease his use of small groups, that I abandon my dialogue journals, and that I de-emphasize the multicultural aspects of my classes. He suggests that I emphasize similarities, not differences. I don't know what to do. I do think that my methods have some value but I cannot go against my principal. Solution: (Rates are posted for this solution!) First of all I would have to remind this teacher what Billings wrote in "Yes, but how do we do it" that "unfortunately, real life rarely matches that ideal, all children, live complex lives that challenge teachers' best intentions." While the teacher had best intentions of implementing a more multicultural educated classroom the dialogue journals of writing anything they want may need to just be changed to writing about a certain topic based upon an issue of study at the time. It could be in the form of a question, whether the student agrees or disagrees with a certain issue and reasons why. In regards to embarrassing a student, this is because the teacher needs to incorporate other cultural studies than just focusing on African American ones. Make sure you are creating lessons that study all different groups of people. I would also suggest a face to face parent conference with Gail Smith's parents in which the counselor and principal may be in attendance as well to discuss the suicide possibilities. First and foremost, a teacher must understand that they have to be cultural competent in order to truly make multicultural education work in the classroom. As Billings also wrote in "Yes, but how do we do it", she suggests "teachers who foster cultural competence understand that they must work back and forth between the lives of their students and the life of school."