Raising Kid World Citizens with Becky Morales (TGMS01)
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO RAISE MULTICULTURAL KIDS?
Raising globally-minded kids, multicultural kids, multiracial kids, or multi-ethnic kids is a privilege and a joy! Today, I chat with Becky Morales, an ESL and Spanish teacher, and mother of five bilingual and multicultural kids. Her blog Kid World Citizen is a wonderful resource for anyone looking to bring multicultural ideas into the home or school. She shares a multitude of ways to teach kids about world cultures and our planet through travel, food, music, celebrations, service, maps, art, and projects.Becky first got a vision for how big the world is when she went on a trip with her parents to adopt her younger sibling. She vowed then that she would adopt one day, and she has. Becky and her husband now have a family full of multicultural kids–she has two biological children, one child from Ethiopia, one from China, and one adopted from the U.S.
In this episode we chat about how a study abroad trip set the stage for her future of adoption, travel, and teaching English as a Second Language.
Becky loves books and includes plentiful multicultural children’s book lists on her blog. She says, “Anytime parents can go to the library and pick up books with characters that are somehow just a little bit different than your own kids, then I think that that’s going to be the learning experience.”
We talk about finding good books for Black History Month, which are good for all multicultural kids, and she lists some of her new favorites.
Books mentioned
Gordon Parks: How the Photographer Captured Black and White America
Harlem’s Little Blackbird
With Books and Bricks: How Booker T.
Little Melba and Her Big Trombone
We also talked about how Becky started an international day at her childrens’ school, and how they made it a “Bread Day” where students exchanged types of bread from different countries.
Here are some recipes to get you started:
Pau de Queio -gluten free cheese bread made of tapioca flour
Filipino Pandesal
Language Learning
Next, we talked about using summers to travel and focus on language learning. Becky and her multicultural family try to go to a Spanish speaking country in the summer so her kids can focus on their language skills. She also took a mega European road trip last year with her whole family!
Here’s a link to an article on her blog about packing great food for road trips—which we also talk about on the show. “”We really think its important for the kids to travel and experience other culture,” she says.
Becky and I talk about both the wonderful parts and the challenges of raising multicultural kids. She explains how she is scared and overprotective of her black son, and that she had to give the “police talk” to him this year—much sooner than she had hoped, and she had to deal with a little bit of discrimination at school from another student.
Take a look at Becky’s book (that she co-wrote with Homa Sabet Tavengar) The Global Education Toolkit for Elementary Learners
Connect with Becky:
www.kidworldcitizen.org
Facebook / Twitter / Instagram
Tell us how you first got excited about living a global life. Where did you travel, who did you meet, or what did you learn that changed your life?
Connect with Mary Grace:
Yes! Send Me the Guide:
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[…] about how to live globally-minded lives wherever they are and teach their kids to do the same. Listen to Episode 1, with Becky from Kid World Citizen, then snag a copy of Mary Grace’s free guide: 10 Ways to […]