Written by Grey Davis

The student body in some Lutheran schools has changed in the last 20 years. As the world globalizes, Lutheran schools see an opportunity to fulfill the Great Commission (Hoover, 2013). Increasingly, schools use access to education as a means to share the gospel of Jesus with young souls of all races and ethnicities. While such schools have physically added students with diverse backgrounds, they sometimes fail to meet the hidden needs of a changed school population.

A main challenge for multicultural schools is meeting the needs of students from minority cultures. Enrolling a diverse student body is only part of the challenge. While it may be intuitive that schools need to offer an education that meets the needs of all their students, schools may not recognize the need to reduce bias toward those cultures (Shannon-Baker 2018). Before accepting students of new races or cultures, school administrators should first prepare the school to welcome them and teach them well (Akcaoğlu & Arsal, 2017). Schools will want to slow the roll on accepting students until they grasp what it takes to operate a multicultural program.

What are the key ingredients?
Multicultural education is more than having a diverse student body. More important are the practices and attitudes underneath the surface. Schools will intentionally create an environment of culturally responsive pedagogy where students and teachers welcome each student. Here are broad guidelines to consider when seeking to broaden student diversity.

1. Don’t accept diverse students until the school can measure how it is meeting the needs of all students.
2. Multicultural seminars and literature are scratching the surface. Teachers and students need to get into the field and experience multiple cultures. Field visits are the best way to remove bias (Chen et al., 2017: Lehman, 2017).
3. Teachers on staff need to constantly evaluate and remove cultural bias in themselves and the curriculum.
4. Micro-cultures in the school should challenge the dominant culture of the student body through built-in student social programs the school has developed.
5. Teacher preparation programs should keep up with the pace of our changing schools. Simply taking a multicultural course is not enough (Akcaoğlu & Arsal, 2017).

The guidelines above take years to grow but should be at the forefront of every administrator’s multicultural program.

A time for reflection
Since the 1990s, Lutheran schools have put more emphasis on enrolling diverse students. It is useful to consider the following questions:

1. Have Lutheran schools met needs of diverse students through this movement?
2. Are schools putting money and effort into multicultural education, or are they spending money on admitting more students into their programs?

Schools that want to take the next step should begin by eliminating bias. One way to develop a multicultural education is by augmenting the school’s current dominant culture ideologies by integrating other cultures inside and outside of the classroom (Yasemin, 2016). This may sound daunting to many Lutheran schools because it is as if someone is telling you that you can’t act like yourself in your own house or that your house is not good enough the way it is now. Yet broadening a school’s culture benefits new students as well as old.

What are WELS multicultural schools saying?
Recently, I studied several WELS high schools that have diverse student populations, examining their policies and interviewing their leaders. Here are some takeaways:

1. Christ’s love is reflected when multicultural education is done right.
2. Every student in the school needs multicultural education.
3. Language barriers are minimal challenges; cultural communication differences are often not addressed.
4. Reducing cultural bias is challenging.
5. The education program is usually branded to a single culture.
6. Student-led mentorships provide stability.
7. The calling process for new teachers is inconsistent among schools.

Here are my recommendations as schools seek a more diverse student body:

• Invest funds in social programs that push schools to reach their mission.
• Include professional development in the form of a field visit(s) to open up stakeholders to the world God has created.
• Incorporate curricula that help teachers and students develop a worldview of education.
• Engage students in learning from each other to teach communication with people from other cultures (Hendrickson, Rosen, & Aune, 2011) and to encourage gospel-centered interactions.
• Challenge teachers to identify and remove bias in their curricula and instructions.

CLICK HERE to read Grey’s complete thesis “Training Teachers to Be Effective Multicultural Educators.”

Grey Davis (’16, MS Ed ’19) serves at St. Croix Lutheran Academy-West St. Paul MN.

Resources
Acar-Ciftci, Y. (2016). Critical multicultural education competencies scale: A scale development study. Journal of Education and Learning, 5(3), 51. doi:10.5539/jel.v5n3p51

Akcaoğlu, M. Ö, & Arsal, Z. (2017). Teacher candidates’ views regarding multicultural education: A case study on content integration dimension. European Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies, 6(1), 224. doi:10.26417/ejms.v6i1.p224-232

Hendrickson, B., Rosen, D., & Aune, R. K. (2011). An analysis of friendship networks, social connectedness, homesickness, and satisfaction levels of international students. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 35(3), 281-295. doi:10.1016/j.ijintrel.2010.08.001

Hoover, E. (2013). Wave of diverse college applicants will rise rapidly; wave of diverse students will constitute nearly half of public high-school graduates, report says, even as number of black students declines. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 59, 19th ser. Retrieved August 4, 2018.

Lee, Y., Chen, S., Yoneda, F., & Chang, C. (2017). Multicultural teacher education as a community of practice: M.Ed./PDS Graduates’ perceptions of their preparation to work with diverse students. The Professional Educator, 42(1), 1-19. Retrieved July 12, 2018.

Lehman, D. (2017). Multicultural competence: A literature review supporting focused training for preservice teachers teaching diverse students. Journal of Education and Practice, 8(10), 109-116. Retrieved July 16, 2018.

Shannon-Baker, P. (2018). Multicultural education praxis: Integrating past and present, living theories, and practice. International Journal of Multicultural Education, 20(1), 48. doi:10.18251/ijme.v20i1.1518