Theodora Papadopoulou
Over the last years, Greece has accepted a significant number of immigrants who crave for a better quality of life and more opportunities that will give them the chance to develop their abilities and prove their strengths in many sectors including education.
Greece has welcomed people from various parts of the world who come from various social and financial levels. They all share the same wish: equal opportunities and acceptance.
The new reality has brought major changes in the educational system.
The school environment has definitely become a multicultural one that needs new teaching methods and a new curriculum in order to satisfy all students’ needs.
Multicultural education is a field of study and an emerging discipline whose major aim is to create equal educational opportunities for students from diverse racial, ethnic, social-class, and cultural groups. One of its important goals is to help all students acquire the knowledge, attitudes, and skills needed to function effectively in any society and to interact, negotiate, and communicate with people from diverse groups in order to create a civic and moral community that works for the common good ( Banks and Banks, 1995).
Foreign language teachers have to face this new challenge since classes have been enriched with students who come from different countries and have been educated in a different learning environment. The big challenge is not only to successfully lead these students to the acquisition of a diploma but to make them fully absorb the new information, participate in every activity that takes place in the classroom, successfully interact with both teachers and peers and on top of everything, fully accept and enjoy the new learning experiences.
Every student is a unique personality who carries strong beliefs, is culturally shaped and has set boundaries that need to be respected. We can’t approach this student without showing respect to his/her beliefs and experiences. Accepting a student in our class means accepting everything about him/her. We should gradually introduce him/her to the new learning environment and give him/her time to adjust. It is completely disastrous to reject all his/her past and demand a quick adjustment.
Although the new generation of students is less affected by signs of xenophobia, it would be unrealistic to believe that all students are ready to embrace everyone who thinks, acts and looks different than them. It is the teacher’s role not to allow such behaviours to find room to grow in the school environment. The teacher should foster warm, welcoming and caring environments where all children will develop their abilities.
A basic factor that should not be taken lightly is ‘safety’. Students become more committed and do their best in any environment that protects and supports their individual needs. Students interact better with teachers who are friendly, approachable, supportive and fair.
The teacher should not be an aloof authority figure. He/she should be the coach, the supporter, the person who has the solution to any problem that may arise in the classroom. The teacher is the one who sets the rules and expects all students to follow.
There are basic principles that teachers who teach in multicultural classrooms should have in mind in order to increase the level of performance of their students. Some of them are listed below:
- Collect information about your students’ interests and experiences so as to prepare appropriate and familiar material for pair work and other classroom activities that will draw all students’ attention.
- Encourage students to respond to each others’ questions and comments, not just your own, to foster a sense of community.
- Show trust and respect to students who come from other countries. The rest of the class will imitate your actions and embrace them as respectful members of the school community.
- Give every student a role in the classroom.
- Provide guidelines for group discussions so as to create an environment where students will feel safe voicing their opinions.
- Turn the lesson into a multisensory one!
Many foreign language teachers struggle to teach vocabulary and explain idioms to students who are at an elementary level and don’t speak the native language of the country they live in. They wonder how it is feasible to familiarise these students with the content of the book and initiate them to take part in all the activities that take place in the classroom. The answer is simple and always effective ! Take the lesson out of the book. New vocabulary can easily be explained by using examples, putting the words in dialogues and narrating stories that give students the chance to guess the meaning of the new words.
Students love being given initiatives. You can ask your students to guess and predict the end of the stories that are presented in the books, write new dialogues and what’s more act these dialogues out in the classroom in the form of role plays. If the teacher wants to have a more target- focused activity, he/she can ask students who work in pairs to write the dialogues themselves, using specific vocabulary that is given to them. In this way, the teacher is always able to understand whether the new information is successfully understood and thus correctly used. Students, on the other hand, will have the chance to absorb new material through strong associations that are strengthened by the participation of all senses.
Students should not be passive learners. In cases of multicultural classrooms, students easily adjust to a multisensory learning environment. It is a totally new experience that they are not afraid to explore. Proper material, well designed activities, guidance, and clear goals are the keys to successful multisensory lessons.
Students who are exposed to multicultural educational experiences are highly benefited in many sectors. According to Banks, 1987; Clark & Gorski, 2002; Cushner, McClelland, & Stafford, 2000; Duhon, Mundy, Leder, LeBert, & Ameny-Dixon, 2002; Duhon-Boudreaux, 1998; Gollnick & Chinn, 2002; Hirsh, 1987; Johnson &Johnson, 2002; Larson & Ovando, 2001; Levy, 1997; Quiseberry, McIntyre, & Duhon, 2002; Shulman & Mesa-Bains, 1993; Silverman, Welty, & Lyon, 1994, there are several long-term benefits of the global perspective of multicultural education.
Some of these long term benefits are as follows:
1. Multicultural education increases productivity because a variety of
mental resources are available for completing the same tasks and it
promotes cognitive and moral growth among all people.
2. Multicultural education increases creative problem-solving skills
through the different perspectives applied to same problems to
reach solutions.
3. Multicultural education increases positive relationships through
achievement of common goals, respect, appreciation, and
commitment to equality among the intellectuals at institutions of
higher education.
4. Multicultural education decreases stereotyping and prejudice
through direct contact and interactions among diverse individuals.
5. Multicultural education renews vitality of society through the
richness of the different cultures of its members and fosters
the development of a broader and more sophisticated view of the
world.
Schools are designed to welcome and serve any individual who wishes to learn. The teacher’s role is to help every student overcome the obstacles that prevent him/her from learning and make all the appropriate adjustments that will help him feel safe and protected in the school environment. Constant support, guidance, and chances to exchange personal experiences and information in the classroom- in forms of classroom activities- will give the chance to all students to familiarise themselves with the new reality, learn from each other and develop a different opinion towards diversity. Multicultural education is the beginning of a new era that helps all citizens of the world comprehend the importance of co-existing with people who think differently, express themselves differently, look differently but wish, desire and learn in the same way.
