I feel so fortunate to have listened to these three elders offer advice and share their experience. I felt going into this course that I had an understanding of what multi-cultural education is, but after just three days I realize how shallow my understanding was. Listening to Selina describe having her culture stripped from her as a child and seeing how deeply she feels that pain all these years later left a deep impression.
The advice Linda gave to a teacher in her story to “love your students” seems simple, but the context of her story made it much more profound: to love your students through respect and understanding of their diverse backgrounds and cultures, which will require a truly multicultural curriculum and classroom environment. Accomplishing this will take constant care and reflectiveness on the part of the teacher, but without it children – and, more broadly, entire cultures – can be acutely harmed.
I am with you on this 100%.
I agree that loving your students with respect and understanding is so much harder than it sounds…of course it is easy to love the students that are “teacher pleasers” but children are learning boundaries, learning what respect looks like, learning how to be in a healthy community. Loving those students with respect and understanding can be exhausting, but the reward is priceless