Reflection Paper#3

My elementary and secondary education was a mixture of both the Contribution and the additive approaches. As a child I was enrolled at a Christian Academy called Ebenezer Christian Academy (ECA). ECA wasn’t really diverse in nationality because it was a Haitian-American school and most of the students were Haitian-Americans. The principal most of the teachers were Haitian-Americans as well. The students didn’t refer to the teachers as teachers instead we called them supervisors because they didn’t teach us everything. Most of the teachings came from the textbooks we worked in independently. We called them supervisors because they administered unto us as we worked and if there was something we didn’t comprehend then they would be of assistance. If there were 150 students enrolled at the school about 5 were African-Americans (non-Haitian relations), 3 were Hispanic and the rest were Haitian-Americans. With the contribution approach, which is the approach multicultural education usually begins with according to the textbook; the school admired important holidays, great heroes and essential cultural elements e.g. Black History month, Martin Luther King’s birthday, Presidents Day, Thanksgiving and/or New Year. Admirations mostly went towards prophets and apostles in the bible and God of course, since it was a Christian school. Using the additive approach, added onto the schools curriculum without changing its structure were days of contribution and merriments for the cause of such events and individuals. Going back to the contribution approach, one cultural element that was greatly appreciated was May 18. May 18 is Haitian Day and on that day we went all out in celebration. We dressed up in Haitian colors, food was brought in by the parents and staff and things that we didn’t know about our Haitian ancestors were taught on that specific school day. I was always excited to attend school on that day not only for the imperative tradition but for the scrumptious Haitian Food as well. If I could go back to ECA the approach that I would want the supervisors to take would be the Transformation Approach because I believe that it would’ve been very beneficial to the little 5% of non-Haitian students we had at the school that knew so little about the culture.