Multicultural Reflection

Growing up in Otara, Auckland, I was introduced to the world of multiculturalism from a very young age. The street you lived on was home and your neighbour’s were part of the family. A place where your best friend was a different culture to you, but you never noticed your differences. You were friends because you liked who they were, not for how they looked just like you. A place where different cultures were accepted as the norm because that was just the way it was. However, this world was seen through a child’s eyes. The eyes of the innocent. Because of this nurture, cultural diversity has always been a part of me, but it wasn’t until I participated in this course, did I realise that I needed to go deeper with my understanding. For this assignment, I will discuss my three key learning areas from this course, including the personal challenges I have gone through and how it effects my future teaching and I will show how my thinking aligns to appropriate literature.

“Culturally sensitive teachers…have a deep sense of connectedness with their own beliefs, attitudes, knowledge and understandings about themselves”, (Gibbs, 2006, p.180). How do we know where we are going if we don’t know where we have been? Every decision we make and everything we go through makes us who we are today

He states “it is first helpful to explore the antithesis of multicultural education, namely monocultural education, because without analysis we have nothing to compare it”, (p.8). Where did my ‘cultural locatedness’ fit into this model? The New Zealand Curriculum (NZC), states “every decision…that takes place in a school reflects the values of the individuals involved…which are to be ‘encouraged, modelled and explored’”, (Ministry of Education, 2007, p.10). At the beginning of this course, ‘cultural day’ was strong within my