Multicultural and Global Literacy

     Global and multicultural literacy are two important ideas to be literate in because they allow you to see how other people view the world as well as how the world is interconnected. By implementing these literacies into a physical education classroom we can begin to get our students to look at situations from various angles as well as why people look at these situations from their respective angles. Many people are under the assumption that their view is right or that everyone shares their view, this makes for little empathy and understanding among people. By working on becoming globally and multi-culturally literate we can begin to show our students that not everyone has the same views, that everyone's view needs to be respected and that they themselves may not have a very good view of a particular situation. Canada is an extremely diverse country and in order to understand everyone and look through situations using various lenses to see why people think certain ways we need to become literate in these two areas.

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How to Make our Students Multicultural and Global Literate 
     In physical education we have to opportunity to implement both of these literacies in creative and fun ways. One way to implement these would be to have an Olympic games event. The countries can be selected and the activities that the students will participate in will be popular games from those countries. For example if the chosen countries were India, Canada and Malaysia the sports could be floor hockey, cricket and sepak takraw (a volleyball type game where you can hit the ball over with any part of your body other than your hands: video found here). Most likely the students do not have much familiarity of the games other than hockey so it is a great way to learn about different countries as well as what games they find important.
   
     A second way that global and multicultural literacy can be incorporated through an integrated curriculum with history. When learning the history of themselves and their families, students can trace back to where they came from and the history on that chosen country (such as that countries government, exports, imports, population), as well they can research the countries national sport or sports that are very popular in that country. They can give a presentation to the class on the information they have discovered and then the class can partake in the playing of the countries popular game, This gives students a chance to learn about a variety of countries as well as why they may view situations differently from other countries and also allows the students to have fun exploring a variety of games that they do not normally have access to. When I was in school it got very repetitive and boring playing the same games year in and year out in physical education and would have loved to explore and learn about games from different cultures.

     After the lessons and the games have been concluded we can look back and reflect on the experiences, much like Andy Vasily suggests and can see which games worked better and were more enjoyed by the children. These games can then be implemented in the course next year along with others so that you are constantly providing students with exciting games that they have no prior experience with allowing them to learn new skills and strategies. They can also begin to look critically on skills/strategies that transfer across games and in turn gain a better understanding on sports as a whole.