EDPN 671: Theory and Practice of Bilingual and Multicultural Education: This course reviews the impact of historical, legal, sociological, and political issues in relationship to the education of culturally and linguistically diverse students. Students explore the evolution of attitudes regarding bilingualism and multiculturalism in the United States. Emphasis will be placed on developing multicultural competence as educators, with areas of focus including: cross-cultural communication in the classroom and with parents; how the language and culture of the home and the community impact student learning; cultural factors in the relationships between the school and the community. Models of multicultural and bilingual education will be presented and analyzed. Includes 10 hours of field work.
Gabrielle Mescia is a Pre-K teacher in the West Islip School District in Long Island, NY. Gabrielle graduated from St. Joseph’s College in May 2020 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Child Study, and is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in TESOL at Touro College. In her free time she enjoys cooking, reading, exercising, and spending time with her loved ones.

I learned quite a bit from this investigation of Polish culture, and I am glad that I chose this project to inform my knowledge and meet the changing needs of my school population. I will be able to use what I learned going forward to provide Polish families with resources and bring students’ culture into the classroom with bilingual and multicultural books and materials. Additionally, I now know many of the differences between Polish and English, and the areas where these students may struggle with learning the language. Here some examples: The polish alphabet (alfabet polski) consists of 32 letters (23 consonants and 9 vowels). Unlike other slavic languages, the polish language (język polski) uses Latin Script with additional diacritics for the special polish phonemes (such as ą and ł). A good rule to remember is that with the most Polish words, the stress lies on the second last syllable. There is no English equivalent of any of the Polish vowels.
Gabrielle Mescia, Touro University, TESOL Candidate