Learning is a Process

According to Nieto (2008), multicultural education is a process and "no one ever stops becoming a multicultural person, and knowledge is never complete" (p.52). She also states that multicultural education primarily involves relationships among people. Right now I am in the process of learning and I know that I will be a life-long learner. I don't think it is possible to be done learning because our world is ever changing and becoming more diverse and more advanced. Also, each year teachers get new students. I know that I learn a lot from the children I work with now and learned from the students I had when I was student teaching. Since each child is different, you learn new teaching strategies to meet their needs. I also learned about my students' backgrounds, which helped in understanding them more. I think it is important to establish a caring and trusting relationship with your students, so that they feel comfortable asking question or sharing their own ideas with you. We have to remember that even though a school setting might not seem to be very diverse, the larger community is and we need to prepare our students to be open minded and inquisitive about it. In Nieto's (2008) book, Affirming Diversity, she references James Banks saying, "the main goal of a multicultural curriculum is to help students develop decision-making and social action skills" (p.54). This helps students realize that there are a variety of ways in seeing the same situation. If teachers model for and prepare students for seeing different perspectives, it helps them to be more open minded and accepting of others. Being open minded will hopefully lead them to want to seek more information or learn more about what they become interested in.

References:
Nieto, Sonia & Bode, Patty. (2008). Affirming diversity. Boston, Massachusetts: Allyn and Bacon.