Impressions of The Multicultural Education Conference

Keynote Speaker - Lee Mun Wah

The keynote speaker for the conference was Mr. Lee Mun Wah.  His address fit primarily into the oratorical category of the inspirational speech.  Usually I'm not a big fan of these kinds of speeches.  Rather, I prefer to gather as much information as possible from all sides of an issue and then make up my own mind about what to do.  However, I am on my way to being a teacher now, and a big part of my new job will be to motivate my students.  So, I am trying to become more open minded about methods that I used to consider to be rather manipulative (like inspirational speeches).

Moreover, Lee Mun Wah's speech was pretty good, and it seemed to fit in pretty well with a lot of the sorts of issues I am being challenged with in this semester of classes:  Like, should we all try to blend together and ignore each other's differences, or should our society try more to emphasize our different cultural uniqueness and better understand each other's differences?  I'm not going to claim that Mr. Lee Mun Wah gave me any new answers in that area, but it was more grist for the mill.

Here are some bullet points that struck me from the speech:

• Mr. Lee Mun Wah's appearance stuck out, for one thing.  I think it is bold for a man who was born in America to take on a look that is so very Chinese.  Well, it might have been a bolder if he were born in Kansas city rather than in San Francisco.  Still, I admire people who are willing to stand out in a way that is more than just fashion - and I think using one's cultural heritage as a way to stand out is great.
• He mentioned that 75% of American's don't have a passport.  I actually thought the figure was closer to 80%.  In any case, I've always thought this was a real weak point in American culture that we get out of our country so rarely, and the point fit well into his speech.
• He mentioned that American's don't ask immigrants about their cultures, and this is to a large extent true.  I've always been a bit of an exception in this regard.  For instance, I traveled to my friend's arranged wedding in India, I've learned an awful lot about the Koran and Ramadan from another friend, and yet another friend has told me quite a bit about life in Romania.  However, I've noticed sometimes when I started these conversations during lunchtime at work, that some of my coworkers didn't seem that comfortable.  I think they believe that my fellow lunch mates don't really want to talk about their differences (that they just want to "fit in").  To be honest, I'm not sure if that might be somewhat true.  But, I've always found my immigrant engineering friends to be more than willing to share if asked correctly, and I've learned an awful lot by doing so.

One broad objection that I had to Mr. Lee Mun Wah's speech was his occasional use of guilt.  I think this is counterproductive.  I think in general it is better to tell people "You act this way because of these habits, or because of these aspects of human nature, but there are other ways of acting that you might want to consider."  I think this works much better than telling people "you act in a way that is bad."  The latter tact is only good for preaching to the converted - who want to believe that people who think or act differently are simply wrong, rather than being motivated differently.

Session A - Making K-12 Schools Safe for Gay, Lesbian, etc.

I will freely admit that I was coerced into going to this session by my special education teacher Dr. Lilly.  I thought at the time that I would rather go to a session which was related to my subject of mathematics.  However, I'm glad I went to this session instead, because I think it was a rather more profound experience.  I found it inspiring that there are openly gay high school students who are forming support groups on high school campuses.  In my day that would have been pretty damn near impossible.

Unfortunately, the session seemed to emphasize academic and procedural issues (like there can be a GLSEN chapter at a high school, and a teacher can be an adviser, but a teacher can't be the main driver behind it).  I would have liked more information about how to keep gay students from getting the crap beat out of them by the school bullies and stuff like that, because I think gay students face a lot of special problems at high schools.  It probably didn't help that the class was shortened considerably by the fire alarm that happened in the middle of it.  There were a lot more sessions during the day related to this topic, but I wanted to diversify a little for the rest of the day.

I did have a chance to speak to one of the gay students after the class about his activism and whether or not he thought it helped him deal better with his classmates.  He felt pretty positive about it, and said that his fellow students accept him pretty well (at Natomas High School).  If that is true, I think it is pretty cool.

Session B - Addressing Issue of Social Justice with Technology

Now this was a great session for a technology geek like me!  I picked up some nice info about getting support for ESL students and the like from the Internet (like how to use Google and Babel fish to translate a web page).  I also got a list of some great sites that I will be exploring in the future when I get the time.  This session was pretty much just a quick overview of websites so I don't have a lot to say about it now, but I will certainly be using the info I got here in the future.

Session C - Gender Empowerment

I wasn't planning to attend this session either, but one of my classmates talked me into it, and once again I think I benefited from changing my plans.

The first two presenters weren't that interesting.  The first speaker talked about women's issues in sports programs.  I don't have a big interest in (competitive) sports, so this left me kind of dry even though the speaker was pretty good.  The second speaker talked about women in the arts, and I just found her uninspiring.

However, the third speaker sparked my interest with some of the things she said.  She said that we spend maybe an hour or two during our teacher education discussing the special needs of female students (this could apply to male students, for that matter).  She went on to say some pretty interesting things about those special needs (especially about self-image problems).  By the end of her 20 minutes I was quite convinced that I will want to do a better job of serving my female students than I am currently being prepared to do.

Session D - Do You Want to Be A Scientist Doing Science?

This was a somewhat  interesting study done by a student teacher on how 9th graders view scientists.  Although the topic was somewhat interesting, I thought that the methodology was a bit flawed because it asked students to draw pictures of scientists, and I think students are going to be heavily influenced in what they draw by what can be drawn easily.  For instance, test tubes can be drawn easily, so a lot of students drew guys with test tubes.  I just didn't feel that this study proved much, although it was fairly imaginative and I give the teaching student extra credit for aiming high.

Summary

It was a good conference and I learned some stuff.  I would definitely recommend it for anyone who is a teacher or studying to be a teacher, because the sorts of issues I saw addressed are pretty central to the job of teaching.  Of course the conference may have had its share of fluff too, but I have to say there was plenty of meatier topics for those who wanted to find them.