First of all your childs teacher picked a really bad lesson. Poorly thought-out, in my opinion.
Cultural issues are hard to talk about in any classroom, and creating a lesson around them should not be handled with such a flippant and careless attitude, which I think this teacher displayed. What she did is teach from what is known in educational circles as a Hero and Holiday approach. It reduces any strong and vibrant culture (which we know, NO culture can ever be reduced to a few holidays and food dishes) to a small and silly quirky bunch of people who are "different". It's like having Mexico Day and having the kids make pinatas and having cactus center-pieces while serving spanish rice at lunch. It doesn't promote "awarness" at all. It does nothing to acknowledge the modern day lives of most chicano people. All it does is reinforce racial sterotypes.
There is also quite a bit of discussion among educators, hell we just talked about it yesterday in one of my classes, about mixed-race and mixed-ethnicity students. Cultural days will always put them on the spot, and force them to choose between their different heritages, when in reality--they are all of them. Often times too, they are forced to identify with the parent of color, which is also of no help to anyone.
I applaude what you and your partner did. Your daughter is an American. If you as a family feel your cultural heritage is American. Good for you! I think given the crap assignment, and it was crap, you as a family made the right choice. Let's face it, America has a culture too.
If I was you, I would refer your daughters teacher to these books. If nothing else it might strike a point to her that her approach is lacking, and might be able to give her some ideas on how to handle a situation like this better if she is ever so bold to try this again.
- Beyond Heroes and Holidays: A Practical Guide to K-12 Anti-Racist, Multicultural Education and Staff Development by Enid Lee (Editor), Deborah Menkart (Editor), Margo Okazawa-Rey (Editor)
- Rethinking Our Classrooms Vol 2 by Bill Bigelow , Rethinking Schools Publication , Rethinking Schools (Rethinking-schools is also a newspaper for educators, she can subscribe to that)
- Other People's Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom by Lisa D. Delpit
I have already checked and she can order any of these wonderful resources through Amazon.
Happy-out, I hope you change your mind about teachers. They are not idiotic, and they usually just want to do the best job they can. If you don't lose your cool you can usually talk to them about anything. Most teachers are more than happy to meet with parents. It's a nice change of pace to see parents that take in interest in what their kids are doing/learning in school.
