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Wanted: more multicultural teachers for our rainbow classrooms SHALJAN AREEPATTAMANNIL Special to Globe and Mail Update September 7, 2005 at 1:52 AM EDT Canada's changing student population is one of the most critical factors in Canadian education today. Currently, more than one of every five students enrolled in public elementary and secondary schools is of a visible minority or immigrant background. By the year 2017, this group is predicted to form a majority of the Kindergarten to Grade 12 student population - a group more racially and ethnically heterogeneous than ever before. And most will speak a language other than English or French. Tomorrow's teachers must be prepared to deal responsibly with these children, and with issues of race, ethnicity, class, language - and poverty. Campaign 2000's Report Card on Poverty documents that visible minority children are twice as likely to be poor as the Canadian average. Numerous reports indicate that members of economically poor immigrant and visible minority groups have not succeeded in schools at rates comparable to those of their native-born peers; the differences in achievement turn up in test scores, grades, course enrolment, high school graduation rates, and college enrolments and completions. Underachievement can have a devastating effect. Children can leave school without possessing the basic tools for further learning and future success. Underachievement affects individual choice, quality of life, economic and social inclusion or exclusion, and self-esteem. This pattern of inequitable education and stigma of underachievement is not inevitable, nor is it acceptable in a democratic and egalitarian society like Canada's. The educational system, including teacher education, must become more responsive to the needs of this ever-growing segment of the student population. Not to do so would make a mockery of Canada's principles as a nation. Yet even as the student population grows more diverse, Canada's teaching force has altered only slightly; it is still predominantly white. Consider Toronto, where almost 50 per cent of secondary students are of racial and ethnic minorities, and only 10 per cent of teachers are of racial and ethnic minorities. Among teachers, administrators and the institutional bodies that form and implement school policy, ethnic and racial minority groups continue to be underrepresented. No surprise, then, that schools are failing to provide role models for ethnic minority students and to create an environment that fosters and values cultural diversity. And the proportional
representation of minorities in teaching may drop even further - unless we take active measures to reverse this pattern. It is important that we do so: Marked differences between the biographies of the teachers and their poor, racial/ethnic, and linguistic minority students make it increasingly difficult for teachers to design instruction that capitalizes on the students' background experiences. When teachers know little about their students' experiences and perspectives, it is difficult for them to select materials that are relevant to the students' experiences, to use pertinent examples from the students' daily lives that will introduce or clarify new concepts, to manage the classroom in ways that take into account cultural differences in interaction styles, and to use evaluation strategies that maximize students' opportunities to display what they actually know in ways that are familiar to them. Despite the urgency of the situation, teacher education in universities across Canada has been slow to respond to the shifting demographic landscape. Aside from a handful of initiatives to increase the number of immigrant and visible minorities in the teaching profession, most teachereducation programs have taken only limited steps to address the growing racial/ethnic imbalance between teaching force and the student body. Nor is there much evidence of serious work to address issues of race/ethnicity, class, and language in the teacher-education curriculum. Many multicultural-education advocates argue for an infusion strategy. They'd like to see the diversity issue addressed not only in specialized multicultural education courses but throughout the entire teacher-education curriculum. Merely adding a multicultural education course or two to teacher training does not constitute adequate preparation. Nor can efforts of individual faculty members to design their own courses for diversity accomplish this goal, no matter how effective these courses are. In the conspicuous absence of a broad vision for preparing culturally responsive teachers, such courses may simply marginalize diligent individual efforts to address diversity issues. Canada's universities must focus on a system-wide transformation of teacher education to deal with the changing demographics of the student population and of the nation. Our future demands no less. Shaljan Areepattamannil is a Ph.D. candidate in the Faculty of Education, Queen's University.