A classroom for all students and cultures

The recently reported news about a student being assaulted in a high school is disturbing. Although the motives of the assault are unclear, the assailants were reported to have been making fun of the student’s accent.

How does this happen in a province as diverse as ours? Manitoba’s schools are rich with diversity, not only of languages, but of cultures, races, religions, ethnicities, family composition and so on. According to Statistics Canada, Manitoba’s population is 38.4 per cent visible minorities; 18.1 per cent Indigenous (First Nations, Métis, Inuk) Peoples; and about 14 per cent of the population does not speak English at home. Overlaid onto these diversity markers are students’ various interests and needs. Therefore, our curriculum needs to be able to be able to respond to all of these students, to reflect and celebrate their differences, interests and needs.

As teacher educators at the University of Manitoba, we have had the privilege this term to see this kind of curriculum in action. We both teach an undergraduate course for teacher candidates (students studying to be teachers) about language, literacy and the English Language Arts curriculum. We teach this course not at the UM campus, but in early years classrooms at local schools. The course is designed to help teacher candidates see literacy teaching and learning in action. Through careful “kidwatching” the teacher candidates observe children: they consider students’ interests and motivations to learn, they see how students engage in literacy activities and they consider the “next steps” of teaching those students. They also see how teachers design the curriculum and their teaching practices to respond to all children, their diversity, interests and needs.

This is complicated stuff. How do teachers teach kindergarten classes where some children are learning to write their name, while others have begun to read books? Where some children are new to English, while others are highly fluent in English? One teacher did a name study with her kindergarten children, having the families help tell the story of how their child was named, while also reading beautiful literature about naming stories. The children practised printing their name, learning the letters and sound of their name and — if they’re ready — they learned the letters of their friends’ names too. In this approach, students are learning about literacy (speaking about and listening to stories, reading and viewing texts, writing their names and drawing their stories) through something that is highly meaningful and motivating to them: their names!

Of course, in Grade 5, this looks different. Here, students are working on identity time capsules, engaging in more in-depth and nuanced elements of identity while enlisting more complex forms of literacy. In this classroom, students use digital photography and video (alongside traditional print texts) to tell their stories, generating Andy Warhol-inspired images, poetry and videos. In both cases, children are learning about — and valuing — their own identities as well as those of their peers.

When children’s experiences and identities are affirmed in the curriculum, they are more motivated to engage in the literacy activities. They are motivated to write and draw and create poetry because they want to share their stories. They are engaged in reading, listening and viewing because they are interested in the stories of their peers. They see themselves represented in meaningful schoolwork. Learning is authentic, relevant and purposeful.

In these classrooms, languages other than English are celebrated and seen as central to children’s identities and so the books that children have access to include books written in Tagalog, Cree and Punjabi. It is critical that children see characters that speak like them, look like them and who share their experiences. Children need to see families that represent their families, eating the foods they eat, being refugees, having two dads, valuing hair braiding or living with their baba or their kookum. Being seen in texts is a powerful way of affirming one’s identity and to motivate young readers, but it also contributes to how children see each other and how they learn to value and affirm our collective differences. In fact, when the classroom texts reflect a monoculture, they essentially “erase” the identities of those not represented, devaluing them and marginalizing their experiences.

The assault of a student in a school is upsetting and we worry about what this says about the divisions we are seeing in society. We hope that this is also a reminder of the importance of ensuring that the language and literacy curriculum that we present to students honours the richness of languages and the multiplicity of literacy learning; that our literacy practices don’t treat students as all the same but rather sees difference as central to understanding and valuing each other in our community and our society.

We feel grateful to the teachers and children with whom we have been working with and learning from this term. They remind us of the richness of Manitoba’s classrooms and the importance of teachers honouring diversity every day through their responsive literacy practices.

Melanie Janzen is currently a professor, and Xiaoxiao Du an assistant professor, in the department of curriculum, teaching and learning at the University of Manitoba.