Sharing some positives about multicultural education

I’ve just come back from the first in a series of workshops that my children’s public school is running, under the umbrella “多元文化” which I don’t know how to translate, but which is an initiative sponsored by the Education Dept and covers education and training of parents. Our principal is focusing on cultural understanding and sharing of ideas by people of different backgrounds. It was really a fantastic first day and I wanted to share this experience, as many schools at least in New Taipei City and Keelung have been running these.

Today, we had parents from a variety of backgrounds; Vietnam, Mainland China, NZ, Amei, Hakkanese, and Taiwanese. The facilitator taught us some ways to share our cultures with our children, and we had some great discussion about our own cultures, and how it affects and influences the way we raise our children. We also talked about challenges we have when Mandarin is not our native language, and how we can get support and make our children feel proud of both of their cultures. Our principal is very open to all these ideas, and is trying to incorporate the different cultures of children in the school into the curriculum. Next month, we are having a cultural fair at school, and the results of our workshop series will be displayed in Keelung’s adminstration building.

We also used a very nice story book, that has rhymes from various countries translated into seven languages. The series is accompanied by CDs and a DVD. I found this link that gives more information about this “Taipei County Edition Of Multicultural Teaching Materials: Creating A Friendly Environment For Diversified Learning” : http://www.new-inhabitants-en.tpc.gov.tw/web/Message?command=showDetail&postId=191254&groupId=11862
The attachment lists all the publications, which I thought some could take to their schools to see if they could get sets for their libraries, or see if their adminstration would be open to such a series of workshops.

With some of us on this board sometimes feeling disparaged about cultural issues and challenges, I just wanted to share something positive in this area. There are indeed schools and people within them that are trying to increase cultural understanding and support us and our children. Maybe not too many, but maybe more than we imagine.

Does anyone else have positive initiatives to share?

What language was this conducted in?

Sandman,

This was conducted in Mandarin, which makes sense when you consider it is really everyone’s common language here. I’m lucky in that I can participate in these kinds of things in Mandarin, and the more you involve yourself, the more you learn. Other parents and teachers are also really supportive and help me out when needed language-wise.

I’m sure there are, and I have high hopes that the situation will have improved even more by the time mine’s at school age.