Multicultural Projects

Last year I worked in a primary school with children between the ages of 6 and 12 years old.  I was an Auxiliar de Conversación in the art classes. One of my goals while working with children was to incorporate some form of multicultural awareness because I think it is important for children to know that the world is a diverse place and that diversity is a beautiful thing to learn from.  I wanted the children to see the world through different lenses and from different perspectives. I did this through a few classes in which we learned about the Harlem Renaissance, Dream Catchers, and Native American Shields.  Each of these projects was meant to show the children something new and interesting about the culture and allowed them to express themselves through art.  

This post will be about ways to take these complicated ideas and simplify them for a younger audience.   The aforementioned projects involve the Black American population and the Native American population in the US.  Both of these populations come with difficult histories and it is difficult to try to simplify the ideas and the culture so that a child can understand it. Hopefully at the end of this post, you will gain my perspective on the matter of how to try to do exactly this.

Step 1- Time and Communication

I would not recommend delving directly into a project involving multicultural awareness if you want the children to learn something. It’s easy to just hand the children something to color and not mention anything about what they’re coloring. The problem with this, is although whatever they are coloring may be something from another culture, the kids aren’t learning anything. They’re just coloring; something they do often in art classes. 

            If you want the children to learn something and have a take away message then you need to start preparing the class at least a month out. You should let the teachers at your school know as soon as possible that this is your plan so that they can help you with the idea and give their input.   You definitely want their input, because these teachers have taken classes in education and they know different strategies for exposing the children to the content. The teachers might also tell you that it may be better to tie in your lesson into another part of the year when the children are discussing something in their English classes they may be pertinent to your project. For example, the Harlem Renaissance involves a lot of artwork, so perhaps it would be better to do your project around the time that the children are learning about art and how to describe it in their English classes. This is also a way to avoid scheduling conflicts with other projects the other teachers are planning on doing.

PS: Definitely consider timing if you need students to purchase materials for your project.

Step 2-  Start Small

There’s a quote from themovie Inception where one character explains to Leonardo Di Caprio how to implant an idea into someone’s head. He mentions that you need something simple, small, and basic.  Then he continues to explain how the idea will grow by itself afterward. That’s the case here. You want to think of something concrete that you want the children to learn. The idea can be as simple as “Native Americans are people” or “Christopher Columbus did not discover America” or “Native Americans made weapons with pictures”. You want a simple idea.  An easy way to determine this idea is to ask yourself “Why is this important to me?” “Why do I think this is important for other people to know this?”. Once you ask yourself these questions, think of your responses, and you will start seeing a trend amongst your responses and that will typically lead you to your “basic idea”.

Then you let that idea grow.  The importance here is that you have this basic idea that is the concept you want the children to understand when everything is all said and done.   It’s your bare minimum.   You work with that idea and try to make it work for your classes.  Step 1 is important here because you give yourself time to allow this idea to grow. 

Sometimes it is possible you may have multiple basic concepts you want to get across. In those cases, I think it is best to grow each of the ideas and see which one is the one easiest communicated and choose that one.

Step 3-  Growing the idea

This step is the most labor intensive. Once you have your basic idea, you want to brainstorm the idea.  While in this step, I normally plan out different lesson plans, research information, and make sample projects for the children to later see. 

I plan out the different lesson plans to think of how to best present the information. While doing this I think of the following questions:

-       Do I want an interactive presentation?

-       Do I want to do a PowerPoint?

-       Do I want to do a poster?

-       How will the younger kids respond to chosen method of presentation?

-       How can I adapt the presentation to the age groups?

-       How much time does it take to give the presentation?

-       What questions might the students have? (Research potential questions)

-       Will I best be expressing my simple idea?

-       What problems may come up in the presentation?

-       What images can I use to communicate my ideas to the children?

-       Will the children like the presentation?

-       Will the children be bored in the presentation?

-       Can I use literature, music, or art in this presentation to make it more effective?

-       Is this relevant to the English-speaking world?

-       How can this be used in Spain?

-       How can children use this in their own lives?

All of these questions can be answered during the research phase. In the research phase, I take the time to sift through information on the Internet.  It’s during this moment that I tend to think critically about how to adjust the ideas to the different age groups.  For little children, what’s the most appropriate way to introduce them to race and not bore them or scar them at the same time. I research games and activities for children to let them explore the ideas of race.  For example, based off of a video I saw from the 1970s about a teacher separating her class by eye color, I did something similar with my students (with the permission of the teacher). The video is below, if it doesn't appear search youtube for "Jane Elliot blue eye brown eye segregation" and it will appear. I entered the classroom one day, and I told the kids with brown eyes to stand in one corner, kids with green eyes in another, etc. I segregated the classroom by eye color.  Then I said the kids with brown eyes could sit down because they are good because they have brown eyes. (You can make up anything arbitrarily).   This continued for a little bit longer until one kid said it was unfair. Then the teacher and I discussed with the children how they felt and why. Then we asked how would they feel if someone treated them like that only on their eye color.   We asked if they felt it was nice to treat their friends that way.  With that discussion we introduced the idea of the problems that Nelson Mandela had to face.

When planning your examples of race and problems with the children, it helps when it is something that they can see. So try to plan your examples to include the students and their friends in the classroom. 

Step 4 Make Presentation

After doing Step 3 and researching your information, you can now start making your presentation. While making the presentation keep your “basic idea” always in mind and make sure that each part of your presentation is a stepping stone toward your idea.

I normally make the most difficult presentation first for the children in the 5^th and 6^th grade.  These are the children that tend to understand the most English and can more easily grasp difficult ideas. Then I begin to take away slides with information that maybe isn’t as relevant as other information in my presentation for the 3^rd and 4^th graders. After that I remove more information to make the presentation more accessible for the 1^st and 2^nd graders.

As you reduce the difficulty of your presentation be sure to add more multimedia resources. For example, during the Harlem Renaissance I wanted to talk about the different musicians and the styles of music.  For the older children, this was more important, for the younger levels, I removed the historical part discussing music and I added more clips of people singing and dancing.   I also added in more active activities for the younger kids to let them practice drawing dancing body parts.

Step 5  Communicate Again

Teachers are busy people and sometimes things slip your mind.  With this in mind, it is a good idea to remind the teachers of your project and to show them your presentation to see what they think about it.  The teachers will give you advice if they think it is too hard for the students or too long. Listen to their criticism and try to mold your project accordingly. If it’s the case where one of your teachers is just a hater for unprofessional reasons, let them hate.

           

Step 6 Show Time

This is the moment to have your lesson with the children. Be sure the teachers are present in the very beginning to help facilitate activities. If you have decided to do an activity to show “racism” to the children, you need to coordinate it with the teacher.  While talking about the topic, continue to ask children how they would feel if they were in a similar situation. For example, after discussing the Great Migration, I asked students what they would think if something like this happened in Spain. How would they respond? How would they feel? How would their parents feel? If your conversation goes off on a tangent because students are interested (and assuming it is still relevant), go with it.  Let the children ask questions, and try to answer the questions to the best of your ability.  Be sure to keep an open mind, if you don’t know an answer, it is okay to say, “I don’t know”.  When that happens, ask children what they would say or think. For example, while presenting about the Americas having different names before they were called “America”, the children inquired about the names for South America and North America. I told them, that I didn’t know and that I’d get back to them next week.

As you give your presentations, be sure to adjust them to each class as you see fit.  For example if you have 4 different 6^th grade classes and you see after the first 6^th grade class that a certain slide was too much, perhaps you can trash the slide, and give your presentation without it. If you see an activity that worked really well, you can hone it for the next 6^th grade class.

I hope that this post helped a bit on how to go about multicultural activities with children.  If I missed something, or if you have a comment, please leave it below.