Diverse Curriculum

Establishing a diverse curriculum in schools has become a widely discussed issue/topic amongst teachers, school, and state officials. I myself teach US History. In the course, we do cover a whole civil rights movement section. But the majority of the course is "how the white man conquered North America". While this is our history, there are so many other ethnic groups who played an important role in the development of our country. In regards to Levels of Integration of Multicultural Content article from James A. Bank, we really do fall under a level 1 category, only acknowledging African American artist, visionaries, and creators during black history month. We talk about the Native Americans during Thanksgiving, and we address Cinco de Mayo on May 5th. Many schools have students of those ethnic background in our classroom. For them, that is their history, and we should be exploring it.

We also need to talk about the concept of 'Mirror and Window' books. For me growing up, I mostly read books with white characters written by white authors. I never did this subconsciously, but it was just what was available to me. There are many African American, Native American, Asian, etc students out there who have not read mirror books. They have not seen themselves in a book or have been able to relate to a character in a story because he or she looks like them, has a similar family situation, or practices the same religion. We as teachers need to provide these books to ALL of our students. We should be exposing every member of our classroom to books that reflect the lives of other cultures and religions.
Here is a link identifying what mirror and window books are.

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