Workshop on Teaching Multicultural Texts in High Schools
At at the October 2000 NEATE conference, during a panel discussion on "Negotiating Issues of Race and Other in Majority White Classrooms: Perspectives and Strategies of Teachers of Color," it became apparent that the issues the high school teachers faced in their classrooms were much more severe than the problems faced in college classrooms.
Due to the growing interest through the last decade in developing diversity within classrooms and the inclusion of multicultural texts, colleges and high schools around the country are offering courses on multicultural literature. The impact of this has been two-fold: on the one hand, the experiences of both teachers and students have become richer; on the other, more complicated. The teaching of these texts, and the understanding of these texts have become problematic. Oftentimes, in order to fit requirements set by curriculum committees, these texts end up being taught from an "issue-oriented angle": other agendas get worked in, so that these courses can also function as Women's Studies courses or International Studies courses. This approach may sideline the richness of the text or any other type of analysis of the text. In other cases, the texts are often taught from an Orientalist position without any conscious realization.
There are many reasons for the above complications:
1. An absence of contextual understanding: a lack of framing.
2. No point of reference for the students except their own selves
and environments.
3. The students don't know what they are reading, why they are
reading, and of course they don't know how to read these texts.
The task is to prepare the student to competently read, interpret and critique these texts. The first task is for the teachers to prepare themselves competently to reintroduce multicultural texts to their students in a meaningful way.
Thus the objective of the offered One-Day Workshop is to help teach multicultural texts effectively and competently.
Structure
The five-hour workshop will be designed to address the particular issues of teaching multicultural texts in your school/school district. Prior to a workshop, there will be an information gathering session where all the classroom issues connected with teaching multicultural texts in your particular institution will be noted. Then the workshop will be specially designed to address all the relevant issues together with different sessions devoted to various aspects of teaching multicultural texts: an overview of the problems and issues connected with the teaching of multicultural texts; group activities; discussions; an example of a literature class -- theory into practice. The workshop activities are designed to cover a broad spectrum of relevant information on a wide variety of multicultural texts, useful web sites, and effective techniques of introducing and analyzing such texts.
Example
Text: The Sign of Four, by Arthur Conan Doyle.
This is a novella that has had a fair amount of success in classrooms
and is taught under many different classifications: Victorian, Colonial,
Detective Fiction, etc.
A wonderful (modern) film version is also available as a companion
to the text. Most students have heard of Sherlock Holmes. But
do most students understand from what perspective Jonathan Small's friendship
with a weird looking, so-called inhabitant of the Andaman islands is presented
in the story? Watson's perspective often becomes our students' perspective,
thus leading teacher and student into a very comfortable Orientalist trap.
During the workshop many such texts (Victorian and modern) will be reviewed
and examined to help establish perspective, focus, context in order to
engage critically and competently.
Presenter
The workshops will be conducted by Shona Ramaya, who has taught at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York as an assistant professor, and at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut as Writer-in-Residence. Her teaching areas are multicultural and post-colonial literature and creative writing. She has published two books, a novel and a collection of stories. She was also a member of the panel titled "Teaching Multicultural Texts in Majority White Classrooms" at the October 2000, NEATE conference.
Information
Shona Ramaya may be contacted directly at:
(508) 839-9985
shonaramaya@yahoo.com