Culturally Relevant Pedagogy roots in displaying cultural competence at teaching in a cross-cultural or multicultural setting. Especially, in Canada, there is a need to bridge the gap between traditional Aboriginal education and western education systems by including spirituality in Aboriginal education practices.
In Art 8, the teacher assigned a project of using Aboriginal art forms as the base by adding contemporary art elements from your own cultural background to make a new art of mixing cultural elements, which enabled each student to relate the project content to his or her cultural context.
The similar idea has been incorporated in Ceramic 12. Students have been encouraged to make 3D fishes with personal and cultural hand marks or symbols. These works do represent their individual creativity as well as life experience. These projects help students explore their true identity and integrity (self-acceptance). A “critical pedagogy that takes into consideration how the symbolic and material transactions of the everyday provide the basis for rethinking how people give meaning and ethnical substance to their experience and voices” (Ladson-Billings, 2014). Bearing this in mind, teachers who are comfortable to teach within their identity and integrity are able to make student connections and bring subjects alive.
Another thing I observed is high population of new International students in art class who do not speak English very well. Language barrier becomes a major issue during art making. They do not understand and therefore are not able to follow the teachers’ instruction. Living in a new environment is a big challenge for them, asking for help is another challenge. What I did in the class during practicum is offering language translation and writing down the keywords we were using in another language and pasted them on the wall to expand their art vocabulary. I believe that by making education culturally relevant, it improves academic achievement.
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