Multicultural Reconstruction Project

The Multicultural Reconstruction Project is an activity that can be used in teacher education classrooms. Preservice students work together in groups and make decisions for implementing multicultural education for a hypothetical school. (A sample scenario for Our Town High School is provided.) This hypothetical school should be representive of local schools that are facing challenges relating to multicultural education.

First, class members are told that they constitute a task force whose task is to develop a plan for revitalizing the school along multicultural lines. Next, students collaborate to devise a mission statement for the school. Then students read the school scenario, identify issues to be addressed, and decide how to organize themselves for the upcoming task. Students may decide to play such roles as teachers, students, parents, and administrators as they work in groups targeting curriculum, instruction, school policies, extracurricular activities, and other related areas. Taking care to keep lines of communication open among groups, preservice students work together in groups to address particular challenges. Each group then presents its portion of the plan. Finally, the whole class critiques the overall plan and debriefs the experience with the following questions:

• To what extent is our plan likely to fulfill our school's mission statement? In which respects does it fall short?

• Does our plan address both equity and excellence? How?

• Does our plan represent a cohesive, integrated approach to the challenges in the scenario?

• What additional challenges can we expect as a result of implementing the plan?

• Does our plan provide guidance for the future, or does it simply address the problems at hand?