Windows and Mirrors: One Teacher's Experience Adding Multicultural Literature to a Standardized Curriculum

Abstract

As a Black teacher with seven years of experience, including two years in pre-kindergarten and five years in third grade, I have wondered why some of the students in my classroom stayed silent, even when I tried to draw them out. I realized that they might be experiencing a form of invisibility because they came from multiple cultural backgrounds and didn't see themselves represented in the curriculum. Diverse cultural perspectives have not traditionally been part of standardized curricula required by many schools, including mine. To address this, I decided to incorporate materials that represented the authentic cultures of my students so that they might share their cultural backgrounds and experiences, promoting a more inclusive classroom environment. My desire was to be an effective practitioner of Culturally Responsive Pedagogy (Ladson-Billings, 1995) by adding multicultural literature to my daily lesson plans. Multicultural literature includes diverse cultural voices and promotes a global exchange of perspectives. However, integrating this literature into state mandated, scripted curricula, which focus on phonics-based reading programs, pacing plans, and recurring assessments, presents significant challenges due to limited flexibility for cultural adaptations. This self-study investigated the difficulties of integrating multicultural literature into a third-grade classroom setting. My own experiences as the only African American girl in my school made me sensitive to a perceived invisibility of minority ad immigrant students. I examined how multicultural literature helped engage students and create a space for student learning, cultural competence, and critical consciousness to emerge even in a classroom held to strict and scripted requirements. The study aimed to create a bridge between authentic cultural expression and a required curriculum adding multicultural literature. Previous studies have not adequately addressed the practical challenges teachers face in this context. Data collected for this self-study includes reflective journaling, classroom observations, lesson plans, and critical friends’ feedback. While this study intended to understand the challenges and successes encountered in incorporating multicultural literature and to reflect upon effective strategies for its integration into primary education, creative tensions within my own teaching philosophy and practice emerged as primary findings. The study revealed my assumptions and biases, while at the same time, taught me to be a co-learner of culture with my students in a classroom that ultimately (although imperfectly) reflected the ideals of CRP.