U.S. Public School Demographics

Yet, in spite of these changes in the socio-demographic composition of the public school population, language arts teachers have not incorporated multicultural literature into their reading programs for various reasons. First, teachers who have invested time and effort in developing a reading program are unwilling to or lack the time to modify their program (McGlinn, Calvert, & Johnson, 2003). Second, they do not possess an adequate knowledge of children and adolescent literature (Ouzts, Taylor, Taylor, 2003). Third, many researchers have highlighted the dearth of authentic multicultural literature of high literary quality (Barrera, Liguori, & Salas, 1992; Hill, 1998; MacCann, 1992; Nieto, 1992; Pescosolido, Grauerholz, & Milkie, 1997; Sims Bishop, 1992). For example, in their review of African American children's lit

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American counterparts. The discovery of the culturally different ways children acquire language has significant implications for teachers in the classroom setting. Because students of minority backgrounds come from linguistic communities that differ from those of mainstream society, educators must take these factors into consideration in order to provide effective language instruction (Meier, 2003). As Bloome, Champion, Katz, Morton and Muldrow (2001) emphasized, teachers must tap into these children's pre-existing linguistic abilities that provide a basis for their acquisition of the English language. One way of incorporating the cultural differences of the students is to introduce multicultural literature that is written by writers who come from the specific cultural background, or who are at least well-versed in the specific culture (Hill, 1998). Even though they write in English, these ethnic authors are very often able to capture the cultural nuances and the rhythms of their native language, which have tremendous resonance for students from minority backgrounds. Moreover, as pointed earlier, the students who see representations of individuals from minority backgrounds are also more likely to identify with the charact
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Approximate Word count = 5716
Approximate Pages = 23 (250 words per page)

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