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I think my organization is currently situated in the Acceptance phase of Nieto’s (2008) continuum. We recognize diversity in several ways, but I especially see this in the programming that we do. I am a member of the education and training department and our primary responsibility is professional development for our members. Every year we hold a diversity conference that has been around for almost 40 years. The sessions in this program cover areas such as working with first-generation students, homeless and foster youth, LGBT students, Black males, etc. In the past year we’ve also been very intentional about providing our members with educational sessions around cultural fluency/competency. This year we’re taking it a step further and working with a consultant to help develop a resource/guide on cultural fluency that our members can utilize within their own offices. Some of our publications and resources are in Spanish as well. I hope in the future we can include more languages and even have our website translated in several languages because we do have some members whose first language is not English. It would be great to meet their needs as well.

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For me, I define multicultural education serves as a catalyst for people to learn about traditions, languages, and practices that differ from their own. I think multicultural education is inclusive and helps people understand how and where they fit in the big picture. It also dispels stereotypes and biases by pushing people to think outside of the box and outside of themselves.

Regarding my professional practice, I work at an education membership organization whose members are professionals that assist students in the transition from high school to postsecondary education. Multicultural education manifests itself in my professional context because our members work with students from a variety of backgrounds whether ethnic, socioeconomic, and so on. Therefore, they are forced to consider the whole person when helping students through the college-going process. It’s not a one-size-fits-all process.

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Positioning any organization along Nieto’s (2008) continuum is difficult to do in a single assessment. At any given moment, in any given context within an educational organization, one might find aspects of the school which are monocultural or affirming. To illustrate this, consider the multicultural position of a school across two dimensions of the organization: mission and curriculum. The mission of the school is to prepare every student for a 4-year college or university. One could make the case that this mission is monocultural because it promotes a single post-secondary option for all students. On the other hand, the school affirms, celebrates, and openly assesses the college-going decisions of each student through a rigorous and highly differentiated college counseling and college selection process. Given this information, the case could also be made that the school’s strategically promotes “affirmation, solidarity, and critique” (Nieto, 2008, p. 19) towards its mission.

Given the mission of the school, the curriculum is designed to ensure that every student is accepted to a four-year university. There is a graduation expectation for all students to take at least one Advanced Placement course before they graduate. Again, this could be interpreted as monocultural because the curriculum is representative of a single college-preparatory track reflecting the dominant cultural view that AP courses are "best" for students. However, within the curriculum, there is acceptance of the fact that not every student has similar academic interests and abilities. There is a wide range of AP courses offered in the school: World History, US History, US Government and Politics, Calculus, Statistics, Literature, Spanish, Biology, Seminar, Research, and English Language and Composition. As a result, students are able to choose AP courses which suit their interests and their future aspirations. The culture of the school does not fully affirm the choice not to take AP because there is a general attitude that AP courses are preferable because of their favorable view by most colleges and universities. Therefore, the curriculum falls somewhere between monocultural and accepting of various academic pursuits.

These examples demonstrate that any school can fall anywhere along Nieto’s (2008) continuum depending on the unit of organizational analysis under consideration. The examples above highlight the importance of evaluating a school, through the lens of multicultural education, across multiple dimensions, to arrive at an organization that is generally characterized by affirmation, solidarity, and critique. Nieto’s (2008) illustrative example of a school characterized by affirmation, solidarity, and critique implies a form of leadership that considers every dimension of the organization through the lens of multicultural education. Perhaps one way to improve the multicultural education orientation of an organization might be to conduct an audit of multiple dimensions of the organization along this continuum. I'm not sure if this approach would create clarity or not, but it might reveal interesting patterns and a better overall sense of the multicultural state of an organization. I'm curious to hear other perspectives about this idea.

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Multicultural education is a holistic pedagogical approach that prioritizes the “affirmation, solidarity, and critique” (Nieto, 2008, p. 19) of people across the full spectrum of human identity as a vehicle to generate “powerful learning” (Nieto, 2008, p. 26).

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Multicultural education ensures that all learners have the opportunity to learn, are held to high expectations, and curriculum and instructional practices are culturally relevant.  Regardless of a student's culture, race, or background, schools work continuously to eliminate inequities and persevere in serving students to improve learning outcomes.

I would place my district as a whole somewhere between the monoculture and tolerance levels on Nieto's (2008) continuum.  Though we are a small district (3,700 students), the majority of our students are white and the community is conservative.  The district has had an intense focus on equity work over the last three years, including several days of professional development.  Through this process, the district has created a list of equity non-negotiables to change instructional practices.  However, each building is at a different stage of this change process.  The high school has done impressive work moving to a co-plan to co-serve model from a traditional model to serve special education students, while elementary schools still service students with IEPs outside of the classroom. Foreign language courses are offered to all students beginning in 6th grade, almost every AP course is available at the high school for all students, but tracking still exists in mathematics.  Across the district, at least 95% of the staff are white and mostly female.  Though the organization is creating positive change in systems and structures, there is still much work to do.

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I've thought about this a lot.   I’m somewhere in respect and affirmation overall.  Although, at times I do find myself in solidarity and critique.  I grew up in South West Washington DC.  I was the minority then as a white kid. Currently I work in an affluent suburb of Baltimore with many military families. Having children in my school that have lived in  different countries and have experienced different culture help us as a school family live in a way that we have solidarity, yet sometimes also respect . I feel often there are questions that need to be asked that no one wants to ask. I want to learn more about cultures that aren't mine in order to serve children that are not growing up in the way I am familiar.  I

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Multicultural education is education that teaches about points of view outside of he mainstream.  It is our obligation to help children understand different perspectives, other than their own, in order to make them ready to be a part of our ever changing society. This answer sounds canned and rehearsed once I read it over, but I do believe in the integrity of the words.

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Nieto's Continuum in Professional Contexts

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Nieto's Continuum in Professional Contexts

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I work at the central office for a large school system in central Maryland. The district, which is still majority white and monolingual English-speaking, has seen a tremendous shift in student demographics. In response to the changing needs of the district, our central office re-organized and created a new department: Accelerating Achievement and Equity. I currently work in this office as a teacher specialist for English Learners PreK-12. Our department also provides ongoing professional learning on Culturally Responsive Education, and the district's strategic plan reflects those efforts in our systemic goals.

I feel that the county is as a whole is making progress towards embracing multicultural education, but many schools remain in the Acceptance and Respect range while others have embraced bilingual instructional programs for ELs, offer cultural experiences, and are moving towards affirmation, solidarity, and critique (Nieto, 2008). Unfortunately, we continue to encounter individuals throughout the school system who continue to rely on monocultural and defect mindsets in their instruction and interaction with families. That is part of the important work we are doing to engage stakeholders at all levels and support individuals as they move through levels of multicultural education support for our increasingly diverse student body.

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Multicultural Education is a systematic and responsive method for instructing culturally and linguistically diverse students in all subject areas. Banks' (2015) principles and Nieto's (2008) continuum offer concrete examples of how educators can use the diverse student backgrounds in educational settings to enrich instruction and deepen students' understanding of their place in an interconnected and multicultural world.

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My professional context on Nieto's (2008) continuum

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My professional context on Nieto's (2008) continuum

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Our school was largely monocultural, with elements of tolerance and acceptance according to Nieto (2008).  It was monocultural in the traditional organization of the curriculum and schedule, the use of ability groupings and tracking, and in its intentional colorblind approach towards students who were adopted from other countries or whose parents were of different racial backgrounds.  It was tolerant in that modern language was offered, but not prioritized, and non-fluent English speakers were provided curriculum or assignment modifications until they caught up sufficiently with the language to be able to participate successfully.  Based on attempts to diversity the faculty, select non-Western readings in English literature, provide interpreters for Deaf parents, invite into the school a diversity of speakers, and both offer extracurricular opportunities and require community service hours in the larger Baltimore City area, the school demonstrated elements of acceptance.

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To me, multicultural education engages students in the interactive exploration of a broad variety of points of view and experiences with an aim towards finding areas of commonality, as well as areas of uniqueness, developing open-minded curiosity rather than prejudice, and embracing the rich diversity of the human family.
The primary expression of multicultural education in my former school, a Jewish community day school, was students embracing fellow students whose ideas and practices differed from their own. Our community school enjoyed a reputation for the openness of our students to others, both while they were in school and when they went off to college. Setting the expectation that all students, regardless of level of observance and belief, were members of one family, we encouraged questioning, dialogue, and respectful disagreement. That philosophical expectation was extended to the manner in which our students interacted with others outside the Jewish community through athletic and extracurricular activity. Coaches from other teams often commented on this quality of our students.

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Where would you situate your current place of employment along Nieto’s (2008) continuum? Why?”

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ME is education that empowers individuals to work collectively for social justice and change.