As the school year progresses, maintain a "multicultural calendar" alongside (or combined with) the normal academic calendar. It can provide a regular, practical opportunity to present information about different cultures and countries and their distinct holidays. For example, you can teach about Ramadan or the Hindu celebration of Diwali. Have students map the respective location, if any, of each holiday and present a brief presentation of the holiday's traditions and significance for the culture at large. If there are students in the class who celebrate an event on the multicultural calendar, they can volunteer to give a brief presentation to the class. Omitting holidays that are important to non-traditional groups can be damaging to effective multicultural pedagogy; conversely, exposing students to alternative holidays of which they would otherwise be unaware encourages tolerance.
It is important to establish "ground rules" as a means of negotiating diversity. Such rules have the benefit of creating a formal structure for discourse and establishing moral parameters that are specific to multicultural classrooms. Such rules could involve such things as 'Listen actively," "Participate," "Engage in respectful challenging and questioning" and "Refrain from generalizing." Such ground rules should stress that the purpose (and advantage) of multicultural learning is not simply to agree, but to learn from each other.
This activity helps review earlier lessons on multiculturalism while stimulating creative synthesis of knowledge. The "Make Your Own Culture" activity involves students inventing their own imaginary culture by drawing from characteristics, traditions, taboos, and other features of real-life cultures they have studied. In doing so, they will be encouraged to consider the multiculturalism of their own classroom and look directly at specific characteristics of cultures around the world. Younger students should complete the activity by drawing pictures representing their new culture and what it means to them. Older pupils should write compositions expressing the reasons for their particular culture and how it reflects (or differs from) those in their own class or society at large. This activity is a creative means of embracing theoretical difference as well as familiarizing students with very real cultural signifiers of their peers.
This activity is best done in groups, and encourages mutual understanding and self-reflection. In a circle, students discuss the aspects of their identity that are most important to or reflective of them, as well as stereotypes or negative prejudgments they have encountered based on their own culture. Students can voluntarily share stories of stereotyping or of how diversity has affected them in daily life. This can lead into broader discussions of the origin of stereotypes, their impact on individuals and society, and why it's important in a multicultural classroom to resist stereotyping of others.
In this activity, students compose "Who Am I?" poems that emphasize multicultural awareness and personal self-development. It stresses the kind of "shared introspection" that is important to effectively facilitate multicultural education, because it encourages students to confront the constructs of self- and other-identity. Students spend about 15 minutes creating a poem beginning with "I am..." The rest can be open to personal interpretation, but should incorporate elements of religion, ethnicity, and nationality. In sharing the poems, the students confront the value of diversity in constructing their world view of themselves and their classmates. The composition and exchange of these works helps students reach across cultural boundaries, which in turn makes multiculturalism in the classroom more conducive to learning.