When a friend, and advocate for equity in the arts and education, challenged me last Fall to reflect on an experience when my son’s patka (small Sikh turban) was pulled off his head at school, I did begin to wonder whether I’d really done the right thing. I was hoping that the experience might have informed his teachers at the time to become more culturally responsive in the future. And as much as I wanted to believe that to be true, I was sadly proved wrong.

For months now, I had been advocating for my son’s needs in the classroom. His bi-lateral hearing aids and his very visible Sikh identity combine to define his whole self. Had I not seen brilliant teachers in action myself, I may never have noticed the regular exclusionary behaviour of this classroom teacher (also VP of the school), or his once self-determined and happy personality shrink to silence.

Culturally responsive education matters because the lack of it affects the way our children belong in a classroom community. By affirming a child’s individual identity in the classroom through socially constructed knowledge, the child sees that he/she is a valued member of the classroom community and larger society.

It was not just this teacher that I had concerns with. What we encountered at the District level was mystifying. Our District assumed that only fair-skinned people suffer from hearing loss. We were presented with beige coloured “doors” (to be attached to chocolate brown coloured hearing aids) insisting to distinguish our son as being different. When we questioned this colour choice, we were told that the District had only purchased beige. The Diversity and Inclusion Officer for the province had no idea about this decision and agreed that Disability does not discriminate based on race. We soon received a call informing us that the District had already reviewed this policy and a change was in the pipeline – two choices would be offered in the future – beige and silver.

I am not saying that it is easy to create a shift in mindset. Our own cultural conditioning often supports the decisions we make but when these decisions create ideas of what “normal” and “acceptable” look like, we need to act responsively. When we recognize how our hidden biases reflect the way we teach, set up our instruction, read, review, publish books, only then can we learn how to deliver these ideas more responsively.

My friend’s honesty rang in my ears and challenged me to rethink my course of action – why weren’t the District taking steps to train their staff? What are Teaching Colleges and Universities doing to create culturally competent educators? Are they even including diverse and authentic voices in their courses? Does Cultural Competency matter in the 21st century when Canada’s population is rapidly changing? The lack of statistics from the Canadian book publishing industry for books written by culturally diverse authors, or for diverse character representation, and the silence from Universities I’ve approached, tell me it hasn’t been a conversation worth having before. (More in my next post about this issue).

Thinking about cultural competency raises fears of the unknown. Believe me, I’ve been there. Talking about race makes us challenge our own insecurities. Questioning the lack of diversity in books for children has some people wondering what all the fuss is about. After all, multicultural folktales and legends are pulled out every once in a while aren’t they? Festivals that roll around each year are celebrated with cultural food and dress, aren’t they? What more is needed and why? Well, throw a visible faith identity and different ability into that equation, and suddenly, the attention and body language completely shift to “a more comfortable conversation”. These are the conversations that need to be challenged. Critical Literacy is one way to create that change.

Silence is discrimination. If educators feel ill equipped to raise dialogue about race and inequity in the classroom, it sends a powerful message to children. Jeanne Copenhaver writes in her essay “Silence in the Classroom: Learning to Talk about Issues of Race”:

“The social stigma attached to candid discussions of racial themes creates a silence preventing explicit talk about race, and this silence leads to further, subtle segregation—even within multiethnic, otherwise harmonious classrooms.”

I have seen and heard of this happening in schools populated by ethnically diverse groups. They become segregated in the playground and nobody learns about the other. Prior to moving to British Columbia, I was of the mindset that Heritage Months offered little value to a consistent understanding of Diversity and Inclusion since the learning focus disappeared after this month. It sort of irks me when I see all the resources for a particular equity month come out once a year as if that excuses the exclusion of diverse literature and culturally responsive learning for the rest of the time. Well, Black History Month came and went in my son’s last classroom and the silence was deafening. It would have been a perfect year for Kindergarteners to springboard their journey as global citizens, with the 50th anniversary of The Snowy Day, but the theme of Winter lingered on instead. Some may argue that the majority population of this small country school is not ethnically diverse, so cultural competency does not really matter. My response? The world and faces seen in their immediate Surrey community are very different. It matters that they don’t associate these different faces with common stereotypes used rampantly in this area.

“Teachers who embrace culturally responsive literacy instruction will serve as a catalyst for improved reading achievement among students who are culturally and linguistically diverse.” – Tandria M. Callins, from “Culturally Responsive Literacy Instruction”

Racism, prejudice and bias against a person or group of people are learned behaviours and from where I’ve been standing, they are being taught well. Children are impressionable, as I shared in a previous post, and so no matter what their individual cultural heritage, exposure to the global world matters, especially through books. Adopting a global perspective goes way beyond the classroom. These attitudes will inform future perspectives about people we work or do business with and ensure we build a more equitable world.

Think about critical literacy as a child who can read really complex books like The Hunger Games but when it comes time to think about a deeper issue within the story, s/he draws a blank. This is much like a qualified teacher who has gone to school but graduates without the skills needed to navigate the culturally responsive classroom or inform his/her instruction. There are blanks in learning that affect understanding. Here’s an example of how a lack of cultural competency played out in my son’s classroom:

For a child who is profoundly deaf in one ear and much the same in the other, his speech is pretty amazing (biased Mum’s opinion). Using the K-W-L-Ideas chart, (Know, Wonder, Learn) preconceived ideas and unconscious biases about a child being deaf point to “prior knowledge” that he won’t be able to hear and speak to those around him. When a teacher who does not recognize her own cultural conditioning (in this case), and she hears my son speak, her thoughts are: “he’s hearing just fine” and so she carries on – business as usual. She does not wonder about any questions she may have or want to deepen her understanding and so, the “W” remains blank. She ignores the adaptations put in place in order for him to be successful in his learning environment because she continues to use prior (surface) knowledge to inform her instruction. Understanding the nuances of this culture and responding to a child with hearing loss are pushed aside resulting in another blank “L” space. Nothing changes, ever.

As a visual learner, my son switched to survival mode in an attempt to navigate the hearing world of his peers, even though he could not hear very much for months. The teacher continued to turn her back to him through instruction, stand under a large fan while speaking to the class and turn on/off the FM system as she pleased at the detriment of my son’s success. At home, our son stopped listening. Our concerns grew about his hearing loss and we feared it was deteriorating. This was a learned behaviour – he had learned to tune out all sound because it was so frustrating to listen. At this point, we began hearing labels of “Behaviour” and “Autism” by a person who was not qualified to impart them. Did this teacher and the Special Ed staff understand Deaf culture and the nuances associated with teaching a child with profound hearing loss? They had been made aware and substantial support was offered but because the teachers were not being responsive to new knowledge and learning, it was not implemented in the classroom.

I continued to advocate, stronger than ever, thanks to the support of a member of the BC Family Hearing services, a retired Itinerant Teacher from Ontario and Voice for Deaf Kids, reminding me that it really does take a village to raise our children.

“The reason to include socially inclusive books in the classroom is to educate everybody about everyone,” said Patrick Schwarz, a diversity-in-learning professor at National-Louis University in Chicago and the author of From Disability to Possibility. “Prejudice is a learned behavior and the way to get away from it is through education and experience.” – from Inclusion on the Bookshelf

It never occurred to this teacher to bring in diverse literature to create positive, constructive dialogue in the classroom. She may have been hard pressed to find much representing my son but even when I did present A Lion’s Mane, she chose not to listen. There is a lot to be done.

Cultural incompetency, in this particular situation, went on to affect my son in other ways. A Kindergarten peer had been touching his patka repeatedly, sometimes to provoke a reaction and the teacher did not think to advise us or educate the child on respecting cultural difference. Instead she thought this particular child would be a great social friend for my son. The bully had learned that his behaviour could continue and it did because of the teacher’s lack of intervention. When I approached my son with this suggestion of a play-date, he revealed what had been happening over a period of time. It was no wonder he was shutting down. Since this sort of bullying connects to many children of the Sikh identity, I attempted to look up bullying statistics based on faith identity. Prevnet (a Canadian organization) responded that no solid research around this issue has been done to date but were prepared to investigate the possibility further.

Culturally responsive education matters because unless educators understand their classroom communities, they cannot begin to inform their instruction.

It was just before Spring Break when I made the decision to pull my son from this school. I had reached out as far as I could within the heirarchy. My breaking point came when I witnessed my child excluded from the classroom circle that morning. It was “Noisy Reading” time and we had struggled to find a quiet space to read in the classroom. We’d moved to three different locations and the teacher never intervened. When she decided to begin instruction, my son’s FM system was still turned off and he had his back towards her, so there was no way he heard what was about to happen.

A Parent had come in to share her new baby with the class. When he looked up and saw all the children moving towards the carpet, my son looked to me for direction. By the time he had put his book away and followed the others to the carpet, the circle was already formed and nobody thought to offer him a space. The teacher was at her desk and so, to make a point, I went to sit beside him at the back. While this Mother shared her news, the teacher decided she would now set up the FM and whispered instructions into her microphone such as “Wiggle your arms in the air” at which point my son turned to me in frustration and said “there’s too much noise – I can’t hear anything.” She laughed. Suffice to say, that was his last day. She never apologized nor acknowledged her complete failure to include my son in a caring classroom community. She was oblivious to creating a culturally responsive environment and even further away from being willing to learn.

After much anguish, our son is finally in a classroom that nurtures and guides his needs in a direction that has already brought back his voice and contagious ability to make everyone smile. I advocated for things to change for him and now I’m raising my voice to ensure this does not happen to other children. As a teacher myself, I know there are great, even phenomenal teachers out there, who absolutely care and want to grow with every opportunity. Don’t be afraid to find them.

If you are looking for diverse children’s books to inform your culturally responsive instruction, or to build a young person’s library collection, please do follow my work at Saffron Press. You will find posts featuring many #OwnVoices creators and their books.

Tags: Critical Literacy, culturally responsive teaching, discrimination, diverse books for children, hearing loss, kindergarten, race, unconscious bias

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 23rd, 2012 at 1:06 am and is filed under Culturally Responsive Ed, Diversity in Children's Publishing, Literacy, Teaching Kids about Stereotypes, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.