Reflection #3

I guess I can say growing up in a mostly populated African American neighborhood made me pretty open minded and comfortable with my surroundings, seeing as I am Hispanic. I never really had a problem getting along with children of other races. Even though I was a minority at my school, my Elementary definitely made the efforts to share a multicultural curriculum with the students. All of the African American, White, and Hispanic children got along, for the most part. I believe that had a lot to do with not only the wonderful, diverse teachers that we had, but also with the great curriculum. I remember Hispanic Heritage week. That week we would all dress up in our native outfits. I remember wearing a long white dress with a red flower in my hair , and my lips painted in red. I looked adorable. The funniest thing was seeing everyone else who wasn’t hispanic dressed up. They looked so proud and excited to experience thas day even though they were from other cultures. We also brought in one of our favorite foods from our countries and had a huge class party where everyone got to try each others food. My Elementary school definitely implemented the Contributions and Additive approach to their curriculum. I recall doing projects during African American month. I did a project on Rosa Parks and one on Harriet Tumbman. I still remember a whole lot of information from those projects actually. In third grade we also had a week where we studied Italy. We read several stories from their culture, some fiction and some non-fiction, and then at the end of the week the teacher brought in one of their typical breads, Panettone, for the class to try. Learning about all of these famous heroes and cultural holidays in Elementary was part of the Contributions Approach. Our African American and Hispanic Heritage months were part of the Additive Approach. Even though my school did a great effort to make their curriculum multicultural, they did not reach the Transformation or Social Action approaches. It would have been nice to go a little bit further into culture throughout my school years. Maybe while learning about Columbus and his discovery of America , we could have learned a little bit more about the indigenous peoples perspective. My elementary and secondary education never really emphasized the students to make decisions to try to change anything either. They never used the social action approach to enforce students to try and make a difference in the understanding of multicultural groups. I would have liked to experience the social action approach throughout my school years. This approach is one that I will definitely implement in my curriculum as a future teacher.