Critical multicultural educators must engage in an ongoing process to interrogate the ways in which their curriculum, their pedagogies, and their work with students and their families is possibly rooted in deficit-based and reductive ways of thinking and acting. The authors in this issue of Multicultural Perspectives push all of us as educators to ask ourselves what do we see when we look closely at and critically examine the books we have children read in our classrooms and the lesson plans we use every day. Do our books and curriculum reflect the cultures and lives of the students in our classrooms or are they monocultural and not inclusive? What would our classrooms look like if we were to ground our work in a critical analysis of power, agency, and the nuanced experiences of People of Color? What would our school communities look like if we encouraged complex conversations about race and racism in our classrooms and committed to enacting antiracist pedagogies throughout our school community?
Advancing the Conversation
In “Who Has a Right to the Museum? Representation and Belonging in Children’s Books About Going to an Art Museum,” David M. Donahue writes that
Children’s books play an important role in providing windows and mirrors to young people on a variety of academic content, social issues, and personal experiences. […] Content analysis grounded in critical race theory and the right to the city reveals that museums are still portrayed as institutions that are based on White norms and culture, from the preponderance of visitors in the galleries to the art on the walls.
In “The Impact of Racial Socialization on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Facilitation: A Critical Collaborative Autoethnography Among Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Teacher-Educators,” Rosa Nam, Kristian Lenderman, and Elisabeth Booze employ a critical collaborative autoethnography approach to examine how they negotiated their roles as diversity, equity, and inclusion facilitators for a national alternative educator preparation program. A major category that emerged from the research was how their racialized experiences as Black, Asian American, and white teacher educators impacted their work as Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion facilitators.
In “We Don’t Live Single Issue Lives: Examining Black Herstories in Digital Lesson Plans,” Lauren Colley and Tiffany Mitchell Patterson outline the importance of centering Black women as critical historical actors within social studies curricula and teaching. The authors explored the ways in which Black women were represented throughout 38 secondary lesson plans within the fully online National Women’s History Museum and discussed how traditional curricular content and tasks can erase or diminish the power, agency, and nuanced experiences of Black women in the past.
Creating Multicultural Classrooms
In “The Power of Backstitching: A Model to Strengthen Student Learning About Racial Justice,” Kimberly Rombach, Krystal Barber, and Kim Wieczorek write that when faced with content as rich and complex as that related to racial justice, teachers may need to take a different approach, making more time to return to and reflect on key concepts. They describe their work in preparing future teachers to approach complex conversations about race through picture books, vocabulary instruction, and thoughtful discussion through a Backstitched Lesson Model.
Personal Perspective
In “Pedagogy to Deconstruct Anti-Blackness: Three Conversations With White Children About a Racial Slur,” Rhianna Kay Thomas examines three different conversations in which the author attempted to enact antiracist pedagogy as a white parent of white children. Grounded in the frameworks of Critical Race Parenting and antiracist pedagogy, Thomas advocates for conversations that ground current topics in accurate history, prepares youth to take action, avoids essentializing any racial group, and helps children understand power and agency.
The authors in this issue of Multicultural Perspectives challenge us in different ways to revisit and reexamine our current practices as critical multicultural educators. We must be committed to looking at our own curricular and pedagogical practices in ways that disrupt problematic ways of teaching and learning and push us all to more thoughtful, complex, and engaged discussions about what a culturally inclusive and welcoming school and community could look like.