Multicultural Education from the Private Sphere: Growing Up Filipino-Canadian in a Third-Tier City School

This Major Research Paper is a call for multicultural education in areas that are not perceived to be ethnically diverse. Through my elementary school artwork, journals and notes from St. Therese Roman Catholic School from 1987 to 1997 in Sarnia, Ontario, I suggest that even in classrooms with few racialized minorities, there is still a need for a culturally responsive curriculum to teach all students about transnationalism and self-awareness. Using the terms “public sphere” and “private sphere” to denote the borders of school and home, I emphasize the unification of these spheres to enrich the curriculum. With autobiographical methodology and reconstructed memory, I seek to create meanings in my experiences as a second-generation Filipino-Canadian in a third-tier city school. I aim to shed light on the issues facing minority children in the school system, and to provide practical approaches for bringing multicultural education beyond Canada’s first-tier cities.