I found the approaches to equity pedagogy very interesting this week.
If we look at the differences between the ways the teacher (s) in the
Hefflin article and the McCarthey article approached, taught, and had success we would need to reevaluate some of the notions we have about multicultural education. For example in our 511 class we have been compiling lists of biases found in popular children’s books. We have also been learning in 511 about methods for teaching reading, writing and literature. What I have been understanding is similar to the teacher and writer in the Hefflin article when she states that she learned to, “use multicultural literature the same way you use traditional mainstream literature in the curriculum” (p.231). This is also the way the teachers approached multicultural literature it in the
McCarthey article. I found it very interesting that after reading the beginning of the McCarthey article I thought… wow, this is the ideal classroom for multicultural education – studies divided by themes, various projects in various learning formats (visual, kinesthetic etc…) incorporated into each theme –I thought this was going to be an
example of an ideal way to teach. I was wrong.
These articles illustrated how teachers need to use relevant and pertinent literature and NOT to use it necessarily the same way traditional mainstream literature is used in the curriculum. I think the underlying idea behind the need to “bring in” multicultural literature, the fact that the need exists is telling. Because multicultural texts are often a “creative” addendum to an existing Eurocentric curriculum highlights the fact that it is not something that can necessarily be brought in and taught the “traditional” way. Although we haven’t really been learning that in other classes, we have been learning about teaching literature as simply teaching literature albeit with an eye for author’s biases. However as these articles clearly imply if the literature isn’t relevant to the student (at least some of the time), if the student can’t see themselves or parts of their lives in the reading and what they are learning they have no motivation to engage. It is also clear that the multicultural texts and themes being brought into classrooms are done so in an effort to try and engage the students in a different kind of discussion and therefore that would imply a different method of teaching. So for example when the teachers in the
McCarthy article are wrapping up the story and asking the children questions to conclude and summarize they are asking questions that illicit “facts” about the text they are looking for closed ended questions that don’t allow all children to connect personally with the material. It would make more sense to ask questions that use the text as a springboard for interpretation – in a similar way that the teacher in the

Hefflin article does when she opens the discussion by asking a general question about “has anyone ever done/fixed your hair?”
Yet again we are learning, I think, that to really teach a teacher needs information about the lives of the students she is teaching. It may sound obvious and redundant but as these articles suggest the more familiar a teacher is with the culture, economics, and in general the home life of a student the more successful the connection between teacher and learner will be. Equity pedagogy involves knowing as much as is possible about the lives of the students and pulling those lives into the classroom in a way that doesn’t give one particular sub group preferential access to learning.