Importance Of Multicultural Literature

Multicultural literature should play a significant role in a classroom, because it allows for students to see ideas and thoughts from a different perspective other than their own. Students will hopefully have learned some key attributes when it comes to what they world is like, and what different cultures are, but they learn it from, their families, and however it is portrayed in the media. These perspectives however, can be skewed and biased based on what the family and the media believes. Using multicultural literature in the classroom will open up not only a look into the information and ideas of a culture, but also the ideas and practices they perform, and what they believe in. Throughout the process of putting this all together, we

Using multicultural texts will allow for students of all cultures to feel included and important in the classroom. We know that reading texts with characters that we can relate to makes reading more enjoyable and students would get more out of it because of the ability to make connections. Being able to make connections to the reading allows for students to be able to do a better job of comprehending the story, and then being able to apply what they learned in a creative writing way. For students that are not of the culture, books can be introduced to them in a social studies setting. Native Americans are a prevalent part of United States history, but rarely get their side of the story told in history textbooks. Starting a lesson on Native Americans and Europeans relations with a story from the Native American side, would not only open up the students to a different perspective, but also teach them about another culture and group of people that mainly get left out of the picture. We as future educators find it highly important and very valuable to introduce multicultural literature both fictional and nonfiction to students as early and often because “multicultural literature creates a community within the classroom… where not only are differences tolerated but embraced.” (Boles, 2006). With future classrooms probably going to be diverse more than ever in any situation urban, rural, etc. multicultural literature is becoming not just a want, but a need to have in any classroom to allow for students to feel comfortable, accepted, and believe that they are an important part of the classroom and the