Running head: PEN PAL PROGRAMS

Pen Pal Programs: Integrating Multicultural Competence into the K-12 Curriculum Amy Hill Bowling Green State University In my CSP 6010: Foundations and Functions of Higher Education course last semester, we were asked to set goals for ourselves in the spring semester. One of the goals that I set was to continue to develop my multicultural competence through participation in the Navajo class/trip as well as through my CSP 6035: Multicultural Competence in Student Affairs course and a variety of other co-curricular activities. I set this goal for myself because I aim to become the most effective student affairs professional possible and this requires that I am an effective intercultural communicator who is able to not only understand diverse perspectives and experiences but also be an advocate for all students. Although multicultural competence is an on-going, life long process which is never fully accomplished (Pope, Reynolds, and Mueller, 2004), it has definitely emerged as the overarching theme of my semester and I can confidently say that I have increased my level of multicultural competency over the past few months. Furthermore, I have come to define multicultural competence as seek[ing] to expand awareness of self and others through multiple perspectives and build[ing] both foundational and specific knowledge bases while resisting ethnocentrism (Lazarus Stewart, 2008, p. 16). One of the many reoccurring questions that these courses and activities have raised for me is, how do we, as student affairs professionals, help college students develop and grow their own multicultural competence? In my own experience, I grew up attending a large public high school and had a very diverse group of friends. I do not, however, ever remember being educated on the topics of oppression and privilege until well into my collegiate career. Having

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spoken to many others as well as through several assigned readings (e.g, Wise, 2011 & Johnson, 2006), I have come to understand that my experience of learning about the concepts privilege and oppression is very typical for Caucasian Americans; in fact, many students shared how learning about these concepts turned their worlds on end something that I think several students on the Navajo trip may have experienced. Additionally, there are several people in my program who made it out of college without ever being exposed to these terms as academic concepts and lived realities. Trying to answer this question about how we should educate college students on privilege and oppression has left me wondering if college is in fact too late to begin to have these conversations about multiculturalism, race, power, privilege, and oppression, especially considering that not everyone attends college. Since most of US citizens have not attended college, or at least received a bachelors degree, one can assume that the majority of the population may be unaware of how privilege and oppression are systemic and institutionalized in our everyday lives. This ignorance and lack of ability to empathize and take others perspectives are, in my opinion, what leads to so many of the terrible incidences of discrimination, hate speech, and bias motivated crimes that happen in our society every day. Over the course of the semester, I have determined that yes, college is far too late to begin to introduce these concepts and plant the seeds of social change and advocacy. We must start earlier if we really want to make change in our society and do not want breed the feelings of resentment, anger, denial, and defense that are typical the first time a student is educated on these topics so late in life feelings that are ineffective and perhaps even detrimental to further development of multicultural competence. Not being a K-12 educator, I am unsure as

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how to exactly go about this but I do know that these discussion and educational opportunities regarding privilege and oppression must be developmental in nature and should meet the students where they are cognitively. Keeping students cognitive and social development in mind, I think that the creation and reintroduction of pen pal programs into the K-8 curriculum could be an effective strategy to educate children about cultural differences, societal norms, and people who are different from themselves. Considering how housing segregation has led to the re-segregation of many of our schools and school districts (Johnson, 2006), I think there is a lot of value in matching classrooms of students up with other classrooms from around the country and potentially around the world. This is because it allows students to get to know people from a different background than their own something that might not be taking place within their school. To help facilitate this, I am in the process of attempting to set up a pen pal program between Rough Rock Community School and a local elementary school in Napoleon, Ohio. In brainstorming for this project while in Rough Rock, I decided that 4 th and 5th graders would be the best target audience for this project as they are beginning to be educated about American history and have hopefully mastered the basics of sentence writing, etc. Although I had originally intended to match each student in each class with another student or pair of students, I have had to rework the project and the timeline due to time constraints and standardized testing conflicts. So instead, the entire class will be writing a letter to their partner class as a group. In this letter, they will be highlighting some of their favorite things, such as hobbies, seasons, sports, food, etc., as well as some things that could be different about where they live (i.e., the landscape, the weather, etc.) and asking questions of their partner

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class (i.e., what are some of your favorite things to do, eat, study, etc.? Where is your school located? What is the weather like in Arizona?). Although this is a much scaled down version of what I had originally hoped, I am planning on continuing to develop this program and project over the summer so that this partnership can continue on a larger scale next year. Ideally, I would love to be able to make this pen pal program more current and high-tech by introducing the classes to each other over Skype at some point in the coming year. It is my hopes that programs such as a pen pal letter writing exchange might help reverse some of the processes of socialization that have brought us to where we are today a society of people who do not know or understand, or perhaps even care to understand, much about our fellow citizens and our shared history. Obviously, a pen pal program between two schools will not solve all of the worlds problems and should be only one part in a more developed multicultural K-12 curriculum. I do hope, however, that it will leave a positive impact on these students and help them develop a better understanding of others, regardless of how elementary, that may set the stage for more advanced development in their multicultural competence later on in life.

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References Johnson, A. G. (2006). Privilege, power, and difference (2nd ed.). Boston, MA: McGraw Hill.
Lazarus Stewart, D. (2008). Confronting the politics of multicultural competence. About Campus, 13(1), 10-17.

Pope, R. L., Reynolds, A. L., & Mueller, J. A. (2004). Multicultural competence in student affairs. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Wise, T. (2011). White like me: Reflections on race from a privileged son (revised and updated). Brooklyn, NY: Soft Skull Press.