by Samina Hadi-Tabassum, Associate Professor School of Education and the Director of Bilingual and ESL Education, Dominican University

Despite numerous calls for the infusion of multicultural education in teacher preparation programs and the fact that NCATE and other accrediting bodies have diversity standards that all accredited institutions must meet, many teacher preparation programs continue to graduate educators who are not prepared to teach effectively in diverse school settings for multiple reasons (Banks, 2005). Teacher education graduates continue to exit their programs with many of their prior negative perceptions, biases and assumptions of diverse student populations completely intact and unchallenged throughout their coursework (Gay, 2000). Unfortunately, these negative perceptions of diverse student populations are likely to become evident in the future classroom learning environment and are likely to affect the extent to which teachers believe these students can or will learn and the types of academic expectations they develop for their students (Sleeter, 1993). Improving teacher capacities to provide culturally responsive instruction to diverse student populations is likely to improve student learning overall, to increase academic expectations and to induce empathy for students’ differences (Darling-Hammond, 2004). So how does one prepare in-service teachers to promote culturally responsive teaching in their present classrooms?

            Dominican University developed an ACI Innovation Grant that was a truly interdisciplinary humanities seminar for elementary and secondary teachers in high-need schools to assess their perceptions, biases and assumptions of diverse student populations through a one-week seminar in July 2007 that focused on the relevance of race, class and culture in multiple contexts: the close examination of Chicago’s history in relation to race, class and culture; the close examination of our own school communities in relation to race, class and culture; and the close examination of our own personal histories in relation to race, class and culture. After sending out mass emails to multiple education sources and listservs, as well as personally connecting with various school districts, we selected a diverse and bright cohort of 15 participants with very different personal and professional backgrounds: some taught in the suburbs, others taught in the city; some were high school teachers while most were elementary; some taught history while others incorporated history into their curriculum; etc.

The seminar began with a brief overview of Chicago’s history, led by Liesl Orenic in the History Department, but with a strong focus on the European diaspora and its role in Chicago labor history. It continued with Donald Shaffer in the English Department who discussed The Great Migration and the Black Southern diaspora in Chicago. The seminar ended with Samina Hadi-Tabassum, in the Education Department, who discussed the cultural and linguistic characteristics of the Hispanic and Asian Diasporas in Chicago. In turn, by better understanding the diverse histories and experiences of various racial and ethnic communities in the local Chicago context, these elementary and secondary teachers in high-needs schools began to develop and share their own personal narratives of race, class and culture—moving from a systemic level of identify formation to an individual level of identity formation. The seminar was taught primarily through lecture and discussion. However, there were two panel sessions with young Chicago historians interspersed throughout the seminar along with three afternoon field trips to key historical sites with guided tours: a Hull House Tour, the DuSable Museum, and a cultural immersion into the South Asian community along Devon Avenue.

Yet, a one-week reflection on race, class and culture is only a beginning.  Rather, our seminar invited these teachers continually and persistently to reflect on themselves as racial and cultural beings in order to increase their understanding of their students' identities, issues, and experiences and to reject commonly held beliefs and stereotypes about diverse student populations, their histories and their local communities (Milner, 2003). The larger outcome for the grant is for teachers to share their newfound understandings with their colleagues, students, and parents, and in turn, become catalysts for change in their local school communities.  We continue to communicate with the cohort and share news and events related to the seminar via email.  The success of the seminar has led us to think about an experiential learning curriculum such as this one but with a larger group of teachers and with teachers who resist the changing demographics within their school settings.

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