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Names in multicultural classrooms
Classrooms across the USA continue to become more diverse, while US teachers continue to be predominantly White (Guenther and Wexler, 2021). This gap between teachers and the growing number of culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students presents unique challenges. Many teachers feel unprepared to meet the needs of CLD students (Vacca-Rizopoulos and Nicoletti, 2008). This is especially true when students come from an underrepresented group like the Karen of Burma [1]. Karen names can help provide teachers background information of Karen culture as well as important biographical information about students.
This paper aims to show how the meanings behind Karen names can help teachers become more culturally responsive. We also demonstrate why Karen names are important when teachers aspire to create biography-driven instruction (BDI). Through Karen names teachers can gain insight into Karen history, Christian faith, language characteristics, use of figurative language, superstitions, respect for elders and teachers, as well as the singular stories of Karen individuals and families.
This consideration of Sgaw Karen naming conventions extends from collaborations on various projects between the two authors. From 2010 to 2016, the first author was an in-home English language tutor and a research collaborator on numerous projects with the second author and other Karen youth. In this capacity, he began to recognize the discrepancy between Karen students’ “official names” on his roster and the names used within families and their co-ethnic community. The second author is a refugee-background Sgaw Karen university student who arrived in the USA in 2007. Her experiences as a student in American schools, from third grade through university, offer important insights into this topic.
Framework
The premise that frames this paper is that teachers who have a deeper awareness of their students’ home culture and language are better able to serve students' academic, emotional, language, psychological and social needs. This paper aligns with the tenets of culturally responsive pedagogy as conceptualized by Geneva Gay and others. For us, learning more about students’ names is part of what Gay (2002) refers to as “developing a cultural knowledge base” (p. 106). By digging deeper into the meanings of our CLD students’ names and tapping into what students believe, know, value and understand, we are heeding Gay’s call to go “[…]...