Multiculturalism in the Modern World: Jen Holladay at TEDxDenverTeachers

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[Audience clapping]

Jen Holladay:
So um it's important for me to say

that I
am here as a parent guardian from the

Denver Public Schools and I just wanna

thank the organizers for inviting

uh parent voice into this venue I really

appreciate the opportunity um I also just

accepted a job with the Adams 14 School

District so I got to do a little shout
out for Adams 14 um you know most TED

Talks
talk about a new idea or a big idea I'm

talking about uh really old idea it's

been around for decades I'm talking

about multiculturalism we were talking

about it in 1978 and we're still talking

about it today because it's been around

for such a long time it can mean

different things to different people so

I wanna talk about some multicultural

practices that I'm not talking about
today

I am not talking about food and

festivals or heroes and holidays

kay these sorts of things can be really

fun they're very easy to do and if

they're authentic to the cultures that

are represented in our school they can
be really fun community builders but

they also come with some risks one of

the things that I've see a lot out here

is I see I see things on the school menu

we'll have tacos and celebration of

sin Cinco de Mayo
we'll have uh fried chicken for Martin

Luther King Day we'll have soul food on

the menu during Black History Month
um and again

these sorts of things can be fun
but they also run the risk of sort of

reinforcing stereotypes and they also
run the risk of trivializing things that

are really really uh
quite important so um how

many people here think most of your

students have heard of Cinco de Mayo?

Right and so if ya all had taught I use

ya all as a gender-neutral pronoun if

ya all had tacos um on your menu as your

students are biting into that taco are

they thinking about Mexican resistance

to French occupation is
that what they're

thinking about? No.
so it runs the risk of sort of

trivializing something that is actually

quite important

oops can you go back one I'm also not

talking about something we do a lot in
early childhood classrooms which is when

we bring in stories from all over the

world right kind of that folklore and

sort of fables approach again this is

something that's really easy to do it's

also a way to kind of ensure that our

children our diverse children in a

classroom see somebody who looks like
them

and and what they're reading in the
classroom it's a really easy thing to do

but I wanna remind everybody that the

value of multicultural content is not

just about where a story comes from it's

also about the messages um
that the story

relays to the reader

last year in her second grade literacy

class my daughter was reading a

multicultural anthology one of the

stories that was included in that

anthology was a story called the Selkie

Girl which is a traditional Celtic tale

and if I were to summarize this story

it's basically about a man who gets

obsessed with a magical seal woman so

I'm gonna read one paragraph from

this story he went to look in wonder and

delight he saw three beautiful girls

sitting on the rocks

naked combing their hair one of the

girls had fair hair one red and one

black the fair haired girl was singing

she was the most beautiful of the three

and he could not take his eyes from her

he gazed and gazed at her gleaming white

body okay this was my daughter's

response to that story um I would say it

was my response as well so when you are

using sort of the stories from around
the world approach remember that the

messages matter the messages of the

story matter as much as where the
stories come from um to be fair to my

child uh this is what Zoey
looks like happy

okay

so if I'm not talking about food and

festivals or heroes or holidays or

folklore and fables um
what am I talking

about? I am talking about the kind of

social the the
kind of multiculturalism

that's characterized by three basic

things it is rigorous in terms of

content and instruction very rigorous it

supports all that skill building we're
so concerned about um it also is designed

particularly with instruction to

advance students pro-social capacities

and that's a big phrase that just means

our students can look at issues from

multiple points of view and they can

um work collaboratively in diverse groups

that's what pro-social proficiencies are

um and the third thing that the kind of

multiculturalism that I'm talking about

does is that it advances social justice

let's talk about that term for a
second um last

fall in the Denver Public Schools we had
a little kerfuffle um DPS rolled out the

new a draft of the new teacher

evaluation protocol and it included some

elements that related to this term

social justice and so it brought out
some pretty significant responses in our

community to some people in our

community if we focus on social justice

that means we're going to turn all of
our children into socialists who hate

white people okay this of course this

kind of response then brought out people

from the other end of the spectrum who

said if we don't have an emphasis on

social justice in our schools that just

means our schools will serve to

reinforce the white supremacist

heterosexist oligarchy and by the way

so [chuckles] right

so if you get hung up on the

social justice term if it's not a term
that works well for you um I'm gonna

take a cue from our school
superintendent Tom Bose Berg when we

were having this kerfuffle in DPS

who just came back and said we want our

kids to be critical thinkers

multiculturalists are interested in our
children being able to look at at at issues

from multiple points of view work

collaboratively with each other

and really kind of solve problems so the

kind of multiculturalism that I'm

talking about is the kind that is

rigorous academically content and

instruction it advances pro-social

proficiency particularly through
instruction and it advances social

justice or critical thinking whatever

term you're most comfortable with

so one of the schools that I have the

privilege of being involved in in uh
Denver

and Denver Public Schools is Highline
Academy Charter School

I'm the board president there that's a
volunteer position where I work

full-time um
and yeah and um Highline Academy

is a K-8 public charter school

authorized by Alyssa
authorized by the

Denver Public Schools we are a

purposefully integrated school and we

mean that like in the old school way we

are 50 percent
of color and 50 percent white that's on

purpose and the demographics of South

East Denver allow us to do that we're

also what we call a court what we call

literally we made this up we are a core

knowledge plus school um
those of you who

know core knowledge if you don't know
core knowledge what it basically is it's

uh it's uh sequence and a scaffolded set

of content that spirals up through the

grade levels and it's a really useful

tool because it allows us to make sure

that you know our kids aren't reading

that I have a dream speech every year

when they when they do Martin Luther
King Day right it just allows us to

create shared knowledge and second grade

that is then built upon in the fifth

grade so when Zoey my daughter was in 2nd

grade last year um this was when they had

their first introduction to westward
expansion

um

and it was now High Line High

Line has were a core knowledge plus

school because
we supplement our content a lot to make

sure it meets the needs of our diverse
learners and when Zoey got into this

westward expansion unit it was uh whole

bunch of old pioneer wagon trains river

boats trains um and that and and
varied that

based sort of in this manifest destiny

mentality and that is a perfectly valid

way to teach westward expansion it

really is because westward expansion was

really really good for a lot of people

and we probably would not be here today

had it not unfolded the way that it did

but westward expansion was not good for
everybody

um

and I was really worried that Zoey was
only getting sort of half of the story

and so I sat down and I thought to

myself okay what is it I really want her

to know by the end of this unit what do

I want to be able to answer and I
wanted her to be able to think about how

can progress be both positive and

negative that's really what I wanted her

to be able to reflect on with this unit

and so we supplemented a lot

we supplemented a lot we brought in the

core knowledge sequence for example

includes a short story that's uh that's

told from the perspective of a pioneer
girl who's going out on the road right

and so we Venn diagram early grades

teachers best friend we did a Venn

diagram activity using a story about a

bitterroots Salish
girl who was being

forcibly removed from her home that was

one way we brought in um
we brought in

fiction nonfiction we brought in poetry

from the Choctaw we brought in um an
important thing that we brought in were

resistance narratives because when you

teach history particularly this episode
of history it's almost like it's a

foregone conclusion but there was

massive resistance to policies of Indian

Removal we certainly taught some of the

resistance narratives from Native

America but we also made a point to do

resistance re-resistance narratives from

white folks the the ladies of
Steubenville Ohio

a group of Quaker women

um who wrote to Congress asking them to be

more equitable um
a U.S. senator who gave a

six-hour long speech

on the floor of Congress um
asking folks to

reject the Indian Removal Act uh
we brought

in lots and lots of different things and

by the end of the unit um
my child and many

others could answer or at least reflect

on write about um that essential question

in what ways can progress be both

positive and negative they used all of

their skills their reading skills their
writing skills we had mapping activities

for geography we had graphing activities

for math it was a whole sort of skill

based it was very rigorous um
for my child

she was really transformed I would say

by this unit it really sparked a passion

for her I took at least three trips to

the bookies which is our little
independent teacher bookstore in

southeast Denver to get her nonfiction

books about Native America that kind of

thing and then she did the most

incredible thing she asked us to do

something over spring break she didn't

want to go to camp she didn't want to
lay around and play video games this is

what she wanted to do

she wanted to go
see the site of the Sand Creek Massacre

because she had read about it in some of
her books

so she was really really motivated by

this content you know that you're
getting it right when the kids are doing

it on their own time you know you're
getting it right so between second and

third grade umm
Zoey changed schools she is

now at the Denver Green School which is

uh when it's fully enrolled it'll be a

K-8 um be K 8 and
it's an innovation school

which means it's uh
it's a traditional DPS

school but it's got its own kind of

thing going on it does have an
environmental if I could get some water

that would be helpful

um it does have an environmental focus

um but it's really built around these

prin around
principles of sustainability and it's a

little different than environmentalism
so for example they are really

interested in teaching children about
the healthy commons how do we protect

the healthy commons thank you

hmm much better so the idea of the

healthy commons is there are things that
we share in common right we share the

earth we share the land we share the
water how do we work collectively to

protect those things so Zoey goes to

the Denver Green School and wouldn't you
know at there teaching westward

expansion in the third grade right I'm

like uh really because we just we just did
this and we just did it really well and

it was it was awesome and now she's

going to sit in class and do it all over
again

well Cartel uh Cartel Jacquet her teacher

um definitely did lay down some background
knowledge about what happened for Native

America and the pioneers of that sort
of thing and then Mr. Jacquet did

something that rocked my daughter's
world and it rocked my world and it's

very Denver Green School he taught the

unit from the perspective of Buffalo

right and if you think about

multiculturalism being about inviting

multiple perspectives think about the

power of children looking at westward
expansion from these three frameworks it

was really quite uh beautiful um
it was a

really beautiful and exciting thing
uh for

my daughter and for me and hopefully for

all the kids so I just wanna ask all

of the educators in the room that when

you think about doing multiculturalism

please don't stop with heroes and

holidays food and festivals folklore and

fables please don't stop there and maybe
don't even start there um because there is

a wonderful way um
to do a kind of teaching

and learning that is going to build

those academic skills you care about

that's gonna allow children to really

look at issues from multiple
perspectives um and that is

gonna enable
them to sort of think uh very critically

um
and and doing multicultural education

really at the end of the day is about

empowering our children uh
to be really

prepared to participate in our diverse

democracy thank you very much

[Audience clapping]

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