Overview
This module allows us to take a closer look at the benefits of knowing ourselves, our students, and our practice in authentic ways. What does this new knowledge mean to us as culturally competent educators?
Too many of those with unrealized aspirations have set them aside due to fear of failure. The bigger the dream, the greater the fear. Doing less than our best allays this fear. I could have done better if I’d tried, we assure ourselves. Among the least appreciated reasons for doing superficial, second-rate work of any kind is the comfort of knowing it’s not our best that’s on the line. By not trying too hard, we avoid learning what our true potential is, and having to fulfill it. Doing our best can be deeply threatening. It forces us to consider what we’re actually capable of accomplishing. Once we learn that lesson, we can’t unlearn it. Our true potential becomes both a shining light we can follow and an oppressive burden of expectation that might, or might not, be met.
—Richard Evans Farson & Ralph Keyes in Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins: The Paradox of Innovation
Module Seven Objectives
At the completion of this module, you will be able to:
- Identify effective practices in multicultural education.
- Reflect on the ways personal life experiences shape expectations about teaching and learning in a diverse society.
- Explain the components and levels of culture and how culture is addressed in current classrooms.
- Assess his or her own personal cultural lens and how this lens influences student success in the classroom.
- Develop an informed perspective on the social and political influences on our education system.
- Apply critical thinking skills to a variety of cultural competency concepts.
- Apply data, research, knowledge, experience, and available resources to teaching in a specific situation.
- Examine diversity through multiple perspectives, including race, class, gender, sexual orientation, language, religion, ability, and age.
- Use metacognitive and self-assessment skills to improve cultural competence.