Review: Quality Learning Experiences for All Students

Multicultural Education, Spring 2003 by Montgomery, Cherice, Suleiman, Mahmoud, Nakai, Sheri, Garrett, Andrew, Et al

Quality Learning Experiences for ALL Students by Tonya Huber San Francisco, CA. Caddo Gap Press, 2002, 162 pp. ISBN: 1-880192-36-5 $24.95

Interview with the Author By Cherice Montgomery

Cherice: If you had to say exactly what major idea you were hoping to communicate to your readers, how would you encapsulate it?

Tonya: My intention in the book is to show that multicultural diversity issues are multifaceted, rich, multilayered-the deeper you go, the more you'll understand.

How do you think this book might affect your readers?

The book, like my teaching, bounces off of people who are not confident about their own identity and are, therefore, intimidated by the challenge to explore that. I think for many of the people who come into teacher education, when they are trying to establish their professional beliefs, it is overwhelming to be asked to stop and reflect and reconstruct how they see the world. Yet, if we're going to be truly inclusive in the educational experience-so that regardless of what differences exist, we educate and bring everyone forward-then we really need to learn a lot about ourselves and not be afraid to learn about others. The people who are, I think, the real leaders in this field of study are constantly reflecting on who they are; and they are not afraid to embrace that, explore that, or reconstruct that on an ongoing basis.

One of the things that I hear myself saying over and over and over again, and that I think is a foundation in the book, is that many people think that if you support multicultural education, you just accept everything. So people who have been in my workshops or in my classes often start off with the misconception that being multicultural means anything goes. Not so.

What do you mean by that?

There's a difference between accepting just anything and everything, which is the perception, and what I think multiculturalists try to do, which is to suspend judgment and recognize that even when we are aware, we still bring our own glasses to what we see. The lens through which we perceive is our own script-our own cultureand being multicultural means that you're willing to take off your glasses and try to focus on experiences from others' perspectives. It doesn't mean that we would embrace those perspectives as our own; it means that we accept that people have different perspectives and that we try, within the bounds of ethical responsibility for other human life, to be responsive to those differences.

Can you give me an example of how you personally have used or applied some of these concepts in your own life?

As a teacher or an educator, a consultant, a professor, I have biases. There are things about people that I don't like, and I'm aware of those, but because I've made myself very conscious of them, I work not to let them infringe on my learners' rights. So I may recognize something that I don't necessarily approve of or like, but if I believe in the process of education, then the best thing I can do is suspend my dislike or my personal bias and extend the same right to learn to people in the class that I'm not as comfortable with or attracted to or excited about as I do to those that I am. The joy is that I very often find that what initially seems like something insurmountable is really not.

Quite often, I discover that had I misjudged-I would have lost wonderful opportunities to learn with and learn from people from whom I maybe didn't expect to. Jim Nolan, my mentor for many years, used to say, "You need to suspend your disbelief."

What do you think he meant by that?

Trust in the process, stick with it, and you realize that you get to a point that was initially unimagined. I studied clinical supervision with Nolan and learned to stop thinking that I already had the answers figured out. I think teachers are very guilty of that -they look, they judge. As much as we teach about reflection on the knowledge bases in the profession, it's often very hard for us to maintain a reflective disposition and move beyond the TWWADI-that's the way we've always done it." I think we have to suspend our disbelief on a moment-by-moment basis and continue to believe in the educational process, thereby investing in learners rather than judging them.

Have you ever had a teacher do that to you?

Not in my early years. I was very fortunate to have outstanding teachers and wonderful experiences in elementary school. I think class distinctions were the only real -isms I was aware of in my school. It wasn't until the middle years that I recognized the result of something that would become, in my vocabulary, known as sexism. In high school, I realized there were definitely advantages for certain economic classes, races, ethnic groups, religions, and genders.

Such as?

Well, even though I was awarded the highest history award in junior high, and again in high school, it has always disgusted me to know that the only history course that was not on my transcript was a war history course that I wasn't allowed to take because the instructor who taught it wouldn't allow girls in the class. I enrolled anyway, along with one of my track colleagues, a gal named Billie. As I would typically do, I walked in on my first day of class and sat in the front row, dead center. The instructor walked in when the bell rang and, without even looking at me, pointed to me, and said, "You can move to the back of the room." I really didn't know that girls weren't supposed to take the course-no one had cued me in on this. I said, "Sir, I don't understand." And he said, very rudely, "Move to the back of the room, I won't be calling on you anyway."