Culturally Sensitive Education Environments
How to Choose the Best School for a Mixed-Race Child
Choosing the best school for a child is among the most important decisions parents face. Those who send their child to school outside the home seek a safe haven where the student’s full potential can be realized. For many parents of multiracial children, the thought of sending students into a culturally insensitive school environment causes fear and anxiety.
Choosing an Educational Environment for Multiracial Students
Donna Jackson Nakazawa stresses the impact school has on multiracial children in her book Does Anybody Else Look Like Me?: A Parent’s Guide to Raising Multiracial Children [Da Capo, 2003]. Nakazawa talked with multiracial interviewees who said they struggled to feel “normal” in nondiverse education environments.
“Ensuring that our children are in good hands in their school setting requires choosing, wherever possible, a school that offers not only diversity among its students but a multicultural curriculum that is attuned to the issues multiracial children face,” Nakazawa writes. Making an informed school choice requires parents to first educate themselves about what a strong diversity program offers and what composes a culturally sensitive classroom.
Objectives for Preschool and Elementary School Students
Here are some tips Nakazawa offers to help parents of preschool and elementary schoolchildren decide whether a prospective school is right for their multiracial family:
- Determine whether the school has a strong life skills curriculum that uses role-playing and discussion to teach students how to address conflict.
- Ask whether teachers enforce a nonexclusionary policy during recess and free time.
- Look for photos of students’ families on display. Are there images of multiracial people and interracial families for students to see on a daily basis?
- Find out how artistic play is used to learn about physical characteristics through drawing, painting and creating collages. For example, do teachers encourage students to mix paint colors to match the true shades they see around them in skin color, hair and eyes?
- Determine whether teachers and administrators welcome parents’ input on issues of multiculturalism and how to address negative incidents.
Key Factors for Every School
Nakazawa recommends multiracial families check that the following goals are in place at elementary, middle and high schools they consider:
- Teachers and administrators support students’ multiracial identity and respect the interracial nature of their families.
- Students learn about successful biracial individuals.
- Students are exposed to stories, photos, books, films and discussions about families created throughout history by successfully mixing religions, national heritage and ethnic, racial, political and linguistic differences.
- Discussions about genetics reinforce the concept that mixing genes is a natural, positive and dynamic process.
- Children are taught that “different” does not equal “abnormal.” Discussions about individual differences are encouraged.
- Students participate in discussions that reinforce the ways all children are the same and the commonalities that unite children worldwide.
- Teachers and administrators move beyond a conventional diversity approach that divides the world into “neat, distinct racial and ethnic groups.”
- Family members are encouraged to visit the classroom to share culture, celebrations and history.
- Teachers participate in diversity training to examine their attitudes about multiracial families and how those attitudes affect their interactions with biracial students.
- The school works to heterogeneously group children and discourages groups formed only by race. When groups do form, teachers recognize the difficulty biracial students face when confronted with “choosing” one racial group over another.
- Forms include a “check one or more races” option.
How All Students Benefit
Attending school in a culturally sensitive environment can benefit students of all backgrounds. Nakazawa asserts schools that explore and celebrate all students’ heritage and identity not only help multiracial students, they also help white children identify with an increasing multicultural society.
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