SCET Journal 2020

Broadening Diverse Perspectives

Teaching and Anxieties Award-winning educator, Gay (2013), a proponent of Culturally Responsive Teaching, attests that imple- menting a new pedagogical approach in the class- room often causes anxieties to teachers. This is no excuse, however, for us to reprise outdated practices. Anxiety in teaching, especially of literature, is not new. For literary critic, Showalter (2003), a primary reason might be attributed to the lack of “appropriate” train- ing. For most of us, anxiety results from how to intro- duce/approach new/unfamiliar subjects that might be outside of our lived and/or professional experiences of which inclusive diversity may be one. Being more familiar with a Eurocentric curriculum and its canon, always a staple in the English classroom, diversifying the curriculum in a meaningful way can pose a chal- lenge. Nevertheless, we need to be inclusive in our discourse to properly educate America’s children. “[W]hat we teach and how we teach” (Showalter, p. 11) matter. We can stubbornly adopt regional and nationalistic lenses or broaden these to reflect our global reality of a world with porous borders, in order to transform students’ experiences. Thus, we can design the curriculum around cultures that is reflective of the nuanced differences amongst group members even within minority groups , or continue to use proto- types as representative of distinct groups. This article centers Blacks and Latinx partly because of their acri- monious histories with the United States, and compli- cated histories across the globe. Our use of the terms Black (African Americans, Africans in the diaspora, Africans in the continent) and Latinx are inclusive. This hopefully sheds some light into our rationale for being very deliberate in the curricular choices we make to enhance students’ learning about theirs and others’ cultural histories and/or practices. What We Teach The English curriculum teachers design has the po- tential to revolutionize students’ experiences, molding them as national and global citizens with a desire to effect positive social change. This is because it would give them a glimpse of how they are similar/different vis `a vis other cultural groups, how this difference might work for/against them, and how it might be used to further oppress or liberate everyone. Designed from a deficit perspective, the curriculum can also limit students’ worldviews, constraining opportunities

to effect constructive social change. Use of one text to represent an entire group would be a variation of such a curriculum. But, if teachers take seriously the adage of the “danger of a single story” (Adichie, 2009) and work diligently to diversify their curricular offer- ings, they will eliminate instances of cultural essen- tialization. To create unit plans that center Blacks and/ or Latinx, we must add multiple texts that show the possible range of racial/ethnic/socio-cultural complex- ities inherent within these groups. We must be mindful that: Writers function as interpreters and translators for readers in ways somewhat similar to how teachers mediate between the subject matter content and academic skills they teach and their students’ ex- periential backgrounds. These mediating functions of authors and teachers are particularly important when the topics of discussion are unfamiliar or con- tentious as is often the case with ethnic, racial, and cultural diversity (Gay, 2013, p. 52). How We Teach Teaching that is informed by critical pedagogy is necessary. One critical perspective we share is criti- cal multiculturalism. “Critical multicultural education encourages students to see in a variety of ways so that they may begin to understand the complex web of intersectional and intercultural relationships in the Unit- ed States today” (Hopkins-Gillispie, 2011, unpaged). In this way, racial/ethnic essentializing is avoided; students notice the internal diversity within groups. Amongst the key tenets often associated with critical multiculturalism, we emphasize “theorizing ethnicity” (May, p. 208). It argues that while race maybe a biolog- ical category, it is also a social construct that has being used for centuries to situate Black and Brown people as less than. Book selection therefore affords oppor- tunities for teachers to showcase extensive socio-cul- tural histories and geographies of Black and Brown people and their contributions to nation building. A Few Titles (Grades 9-12) Borrowing a framework from Robert Coles (2004), we suggest a preliminary brainstorming set of ques- tions in preparation for Units on Black and Latinx cultures in the English classroom: • What do students think is important to learn about Black and Latinx people/cultures?

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