Even if a teacher had a roomful of all “white”, English-speaking students born in the United States, that teacher would still have a multicultural class. Life experiences, prior educational opportunities, genders, learning styles and personalities of the students create “multiculturalism.” English as a Second Language teachers have all this usual mix of differences, plus a greater blend of cultural backgrounds, native languages and life experiences. Refugee and immigrant children have many of the same challenges as “mainstream” children, but they have some unique issues as well. This article will discuss some of the cultural adjustment issues that limited English speaking children often bring to the classroom, some of the choices teachers have to make when managing the classroom, and tips on how to promote effective and efficient learning.
Often service providers comment that the children of a refugee or immigrant family will adjust easily because children generally learn English more quickly than their parents, and they usually are immersed in a school setting where they encounter the “majority” culture daily. While there is some truth to this view, there are cautions that need to be considered. Except in very rare cases, children do not make the decision to move or leave their homeland. Generally they can bring with them very few items related to their past, and they leave behind budding relationships and familiar sights. Even if they understand the dynamics of the difficult situation their family is leaving, they may feel victimized by the move and by their parents.
Clarity is replaced with confusion. Refugee and immigrant families may have developed a reasonably clear idea of their roles and family expectations in the native culture. Parents are comfortable with parenting roles in the family and their responsibilities toward their children prior to coming to a new land. It can be very frightening for both parents and children when they come to a new culture and suddenly find the old rules don’t seem to work and the new ones aren’t obvious.
In their new country, children don’t know the roles/expectations of children and they have no clear guides. Their parents have knowledge only about how their roles worked before. When they hear about or experience differences in the new culture, their struggle to understand and adapt may be very unsettling for the children. In addition, parents are often overwhelmed by the complexities of coping in the new environment and may not have the time or energy to spend on their children as they had before. To further complicate the role confusion, children who learn English more quickly than their parents are sometimes asked to be interpreters for them, often in medical or school settings. This role reversal can cause distress to both parents and children, indicative of how difficult cultural adjustment can be.
What, then, is the role of the teacher? The teacher is in the classroom to provide a learning environment for the students, not to play the role of therapist or psychologist. Further constraints on the teacher include little time and energy and few resources. However, both teachers and students benefit when teachers are provided an orientation to new learner populations, identification of community resources to help with specific ethnic groups, information about the situation in the home countries of the students, and descriptions of the potential mental health and cultural adjustment challenges. Finding ways to enrich the experiences of all students in the class by utilizing the opportunities that diversity and a multicultural environment bring, while meeting the needs of individual students, is indeed a challenge for the teacher.
Remembering the vast differences between people, even from the same country or ethnic group, the teacher needs to be cautious about attributing problems to just one cause. Information becomes crucial. Is there printed material available through a community agency, such as the agency that resettled this family? Is there a community member or parent who can shed some light on how education is structured in one of these various cultures, and the primary learning style of its students? (For example, is rote memorization or creativity encouraged?) What is the literacy level of the students in their native language? What were cultural norms and rules in the “home” country related to various age levels? Was there a disruption of education due to war? What are the stages of acculturation, what causes culture shock, and how can it be recognized?
Appropriate conversations with parents, with the aid of an interpreter other than the child, can be a source of both general and specific information, at the same time building relationships with, and involvement of, the families. (In many cultures, education is left to the educators, and it is unthinkable that parents would interfere or even be involved in this area where teachers are thought to know best. ) This kind of background information prepares the teacher to utilize instructional methodology and design teaching techniques and activities to engage the multicultural nature of the class as an asset. It also alerts the teacher about how to assist individual students who may be having particular challenges adjusting to a new environment and life.
Teachers should also know where and how to refer students appropriately, should the teacher notice behavior that may represent a student’s need for mental health intervention. Having this information ahead of time can ease the teacher’s mind and identify allies for ambiguous situations that need professional evaluation. It is sometimes hard to distinguish an individual’s unique dysfunctional pattern of coping from a sign of traumatic after-affects, a cry for help, or all three.
What are some of the instructional strategies teachers might call upon specifically to address the challenges presented by the multicultural classroom? Many of these activities probably have been used in many different class settings. However, thinking about them with an eye to enhancing opportunities for learning based on multicultural experiences and needs may mean the teacher manages both the content and the details of presentation and participation differently. Pictures, maps and artifacts from the students’ home countries can be used as the basis for many different points of learning. A whole host of opportunities can be created in which the children can teach about the way things are done where they came from.
Children need to experience the classroom as a safe environment where they can tell their stories or be encouraged to draw or write. Journals often are a good way for this to happen because they provide privacy. However even in journals, students should never feel pressure to reveal more than they are willing or want to declare. Assignments should be broad enough so that every child can participate without feeling discomfort about the subject or the memories and experiences it brings up for them.
On the other hand, such assignments may give students opportunities to work through difficult facets of their life by simply being listened to. Teachers do not have to listen with a therapist’s hat on, but simply as a friend and or ally as the student comes to terms with the new culture. Although the multicultural classroom contains a cacophony of differences, there are likely more similarities present between the students than differences. These can be building blocks to help children from various cultures (even those in which severe animosity still exists between people) learn to relate to each other and to the world at large. Having students work in pairs and small groups also gives them opportunities to share and risk and to get to know each other more than some might in a large group setting. This also provides opportunities to handle both the usual multilevel and multicultural aspects of the classroom.
The multicultural classroom may at first be uncomfortable and challenging to both teachers and students. However, managed well, it can provide the richest of environments for learning, both to students and teachers. It can be a major factor in helping students adjust to a new culture, and be successful in school.
by Burna Dunn and Myrna Ann Adkins.
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