Abstract Teachers generally advan...

Abstract

Teachers generally advance out of teacher education programs with true little background in multicultural issues and instructional techniques. This thought documents the use of Latino children's literature in field experience seminars to help preservice teachers (teacher candidates) gain background knowledge of the agricultures traditions, language, and issues surrounding Latinos in the United States and the elementary bookish mans with whom they will be working. The teacher candidates then use the same literature in their field experience classrooms, tapping into the children's foundations of knowledge and encouraging the children to accord in a personal way. This experience enriches the teacher candidates' work with children and broadens their personal perspective and understanding of agricultures different from their own. This subject of attention found that using Latino children's literature in a university teacher education program benefited one as well as the other the preservice teachers and their learners

"So you are..."

"Maria Isabel Salazar Lopez" she replied...

"Ah, Maria Lopez" the teacher said as she read the card.

"We already have couple Mafias in this class. wherefore don't we call you Mary instead?" (Ada, 1993 p 8)

Introduction

Changing "foreign" names to make things more convenient has a drawn out history in the United States. At the use of the century, coming in consequence of Ellis Island, Chaims became Edwards, Rivkas became compassions and throughout U.S. schools in the 20th centenary countless Marias, Angelicas, and Franciscos became Marys, Angies, and Franks. As teachers, we realize that our students' names have special significance, and to change them arbitrarily devalues the children and their heritage. There is long more we need to understand about our students' backgrounds for, in fact, principally of us who are teaching have grown up in agricultures very different from those of the children we teach.

According to the U Department of Education (2000) throughout 37% of K-12 students are culturally, linguistically, and ethnically different from the dominant U agriculture Recent reports put the teaching population at 90% White, female, and middle class. If sole 10% of teachers are linguistic and ethnic minorities and almost 40% of scholars are linguistic and ethnic minorities, it is clear that many thousands of close examiners are being taught by teachers who have little or no background in the children's tillage language, traditions, and history. Whatever ethnicity they draw near from, teachers are finding themselves in instructs where their own experiential background differs from that of their learners (Grant & Gomez, 2001; Taylor, 2000; Nieto, 2000) Teachers who are born in the United States and vegetate up in some strata of the middle class may have little in frequent with students of the same ethnicity who are immigrants or who shoot up in lower socioeconomic status situations (Zeichner, 1993 in Taylor, 2000; ChAvez Chivez, 1996) In discussing the use of multicultural literature in teaching, Taylor (2000) advises "Considering the current mismatch between students' and teachers' diversity, teachers may want to sensitize and show up their students and themselves to multiple perspectives and tillages of U.S. society" (p. 25)

We know that bookish mans must connect with teachers and the sect culture if they are going to unite with school at all (Garcia, 1994) We have also seen that common characteristic of successful teachers is that they wait to know a great deal about their students' lives (Davis, Clarke, & Rhode 1994) However, it is difficult for teachers to tap into children's extensive stores of knowledge (Moll, 1993) if they don't have any idea that those stocks exist or how to access them. We believe strenuously that educators can learn about the myriad cultivations that make up our country's population and that it is imperative that all observers and teachers, no matter their allow ethnicity and culture, learn about as many other agricultures traditions, and histories as possible athwart the course of their education and professional careers. This can best begin by dint of learning about the cultures and traditions of the children in their classrooms.

Using folk tales produc according to mainstream and minority authors and publishers to teach about the improvements of various people has a firm foundation in the United States. Studies have been done in succession the use of multicultural children's literature in social studies venue to teach about multiculturalism and agriculture (Boyle-Baise, 1996; Mathis, 2001), and in teacher education courses to teach about the methodology of using children's literature and the power of diverse opinions (Roberts, Jensen & Hadjiyianni, 1997; Williams & Owens, 1997) However, there has been little, if any, meditation on the use of children's literature of a specific ethnicity or agriculture to inform mainstream educators about their bookish man constituents.

Being familiar with the impact that virtuous children's literature has in elementary classrooms, we decided to use the growing number of Latino children's works as a teaching and learning vehicle for our preservice teachers (teacher candidates) to help them learn about and combine with the Latino children in their field placement seminarys