Multicultural Education Programs

by Linda Evans, College of Education & Human Development (CEHD)

As the population of U.S. school-age children becomes increasingly more diverse, our pool of potential teachers remains less so. We need to consider policies that increase the diversity of the teacher pool, and we need to prepare all teachers to reach children whose backgrounds are different than their own. --The Education Alliance at Brown University, 2004 Minority Teacher Recruitment, Development, and Retention

CEHD is in year three of the design, development, and implementation of Multicultural Education Programs, a U.S. Department of Education, National Professional Development program. This five-year grant funded program is multifaceted and is responsible for the design and development of the following:

Abdullah Ahmed, Newcomer ETEP student and ETEP graduate May, 2004
Abdullah Ahmed, Newcomer ETEP student and ETEP graduate May, 2004

Newcomer Extended Teacher Education Program (Newcomer ETEP)

A primary goal of Multicultural Education Programs is to increase the number of qualified school personnel serving culturally and linguistically diverse students in Maine schools. Newcomer ETEP was created to help fill this critical need. Participants in this program include immigrants and refugees who have settled in Maine, and who call Maine home. Today there are 3,200 ELLs covering 75 languages enrolled in approximately 50% of Maine schools. In Portland Public Schools (PPS), 53 native languages are spoken with enrollment of ELLs at 23%. This constitutes 1,650 minority learners in a student body of 7,232 (Valenzuela, 2004). PPS has made a conscious effort to recruit minority staff members which is why they are a partner with USM in the Newcomer ETEP program.

Newcomer ETEP has become a well-known and highly valued teacher preparation program for Portland’s ever-increasing population of New Mainers. Newcomer ETEP responds to a host of needs that are specific to this population of culturally and linguistically diverse individuals, primarily in ways that relate to English language enhancement and academic achievement, tuition support, and through the development of a program that is forward thinking and flexible in response to the students it serves.

Dr. Flynn Ross (left) is the Portland ETEP coordinator and Associate Professor in the Teacher Education Department at USM. Abdi Musa is a student in the Newcomer ETEP program.
Dr. Flynn Ross (left) is the Portland ETEP coordinator and Associate Professor in the Teacher Education Department at USM. Abdi Musa is a student in the Newcomer ETEP program.

Today, in a global society, it is imperative that all children are exposed to educators of all races and nationalities…. In a multiethnic society, multicultural education is not a frill. (West, 1994).

The Newcomer ETEP Program is modeled after the graduate level ETEP teacher certification program. The Newcomer participants work in schools and take courses for two years rather than combining both into a nine-month timeframe. The extra time allows for more support including: academic writing; socialization to the Maine school system; and test preparation for the Praxis I and II exams - - standardized tests necessary for certification. The Newcomer participants are integrated with the ETEP cohorts of student teachers which provides an enriching perspective for the new teachers as they learn to work with students from many nations and cultural backgrounds. The perspectives of individuals who have been educated in other nations and have taught in classrooms in Maine help bring to light the importance of teaching strategies and philosophies that many of us take for granted (Ross, 2004).

The challenges of ensuring teacher excellence and diversity are not new. However, only recently have these issues begun to garner the public attention needed to bring about actual change in the composition of the teacher workforce. —National Collaborative on Diversity in the Teaching Force, 2004

In the three years since this program began, Newcomer participants have come from Vietnam, Cambodia, Iran, Somalia, Peru, Azerbaijan, Turkey, India, Congo, Thailand, Albania, Togo, Japan, and Sudan. They have included a recent graduate who earned his BS in Chemistry from the Campus Universitaire de Kinshasa in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo. There he taught general, mineral, and organic chemistry for six years, one at the secondary-school level, and five at the college level. Another participant earned his bachelor’s degree in Togo, West Africa, and completed his masters and doctoral work in Poitiers, France. His degrees are in law studies. This Newcomer ETEP student worked as an assistant professor at the University of Benin, Togo, and as a Professor of Commercial, Civil, and International Law. During that time he received the ‘Best Law Teacher’ award. A student recently admitted to the 2005-06 Newcomer ETEP cohort is from Thailand. Before coming to the U.S. she worked as a teacher for seventeen years, first in a government school and then in a private bilingual school. This woman earned her bachelor’s degree in English Language and Literature and her masters from Silaakorn University, Thailand, in Teaching English as a Foreign Language. The Newcomer ETEP program provides such talented, experienced, and highly educated individuals the opportunity to become acclimated to, and to eventually teach in public K-12 schools in Maine.

Solange Muhare is a student in the Newcomer ETEP program.
Solange Muhare is a student in the Newcomer ETEP program.

Professional Development/English as a Second Language (ESL) Endorsement

Another programmatic priority is to increase opportunities for pre/inservice teachers, administrators, and other educational personnel to learn about issues specific to ELLs. This is done through workshops customized to meet the needs of this target audience, primarily in the area of literacy and content-area instruction for ELLs. In addition, English as a Second Language (ESL) courses leading to Maine state endorsement are offered in a streamlined fashion each semester for teachers and those planning to become teachers. Multicultural Education Programs continues to recruit and build the number of educators who will be better equipped to work and meet the needs of ELLs in response to the changing demographics in Maine. To date, ninety-five students have been supported (tuition and textbooks) to take ESL classes; of these, sixteen individuals will have completed the five courses necessary to obtain ESL endorsement by the end of summer 2005. It is imperative that professional development opportunities which integrate issues related to ELL children across the board are in place so that the needs of non-native English speaking children will be served and served well in our schools.

We expect teachers to educate whoever shows up at the schoolhouse, provide their students the language and literacy skills to survive in school and later on in jobs, to teach them all of the school subjects that they will need to know about as adults, and to prepare them in other ways for higher education and for jobs. —Snow and Wong-Filmore (2004)

Graduate Certificate in Culturally Responsive Practices

Multicultural Education Program works in close partnership with the Multicultural Learning Collaborative (MLC), a group comprised of CEHD faculty and staff members. The MLC’s mission includes supporting the preparation of educators and professionals for culturally responsive and ethical practice. A concrete offering of the MLC has been the design and development of a graduate certificate program. This 12-credit graduate certificate in culturally responsive practices, offered through CEHD and housed in the Department of Human Resource Development (HRD), will accommodate teachers, educational technicians, counselors, leaders in education, and matriculated and non-matriculated graduate students who wish to obtain a basic background in culturally responsive practices. The certificate program will begin fall 2005; tuition and textbook supports will be readily available for qualifying students.

Multicultural Education Programs continues to build an infrastructure that connects the university, CEHD, and the community in ways that are responsive, visible, and vital in the recruitment, preparation, and support of a teaching cadre that is fully qualified, ethnically diverse, and culturally competent. The creation of such relationships, the alignment of practical resources, and the sharing of best practices created over time, will serve to foster change and deepen the understanding of all parties while addressing the needs of the linguistic and culturally diverse population of New Mainers - - child and adult learners alike.

Footnotes--------------

Ross, F. (2004). Teaching in a Democracy: Learning from Immigrants and Refugees. Journal of Maine Education, Challenging the Norms: Opening Education to New Ideas, Maine, ASCD, vol. XX, no. 1

West, P.R. (1994, November). The recruitment, selection, occupational adjustment, development and retention of culturally diverse educators: A mandate for change. Paper presented at the Fall Seminar of the Ohio Education Association, Dayton, OH. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 403 232.

Wong Fillmore, L. & Snow, C.E. (2000). What teachers need to know about language. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics