Diversity in the Classrom and All Its Forms

Student diversity in U.S. schools exists in many forms. In a bulleted fashion list and briefly describe four ways in which students are diverse in today’s classrooms.

Culturally

We need to support our students to be proud and embrace their heritage and culture. To use a culturally-centered instructional approach can help the student feel pride among other students. Sometimes students can feel pressured to dispose of their cultural beliefs and/or traditions. If this happens, it can create a disconnection between the student’s culture at school and his/her community life. This can impact the student’s emotional growth and social development and can lead to poor performance in his/her academic domains.

Socio-economic factor

We must help our students recognize how the intersections of race, gender, ethnicity, religion and socio-economic status impacts each individual person. Children need to learn that the amount of money a person or a family has doesn’t make them more or less important. We are all the same inside and regardless of the economic status we can all have positive influences in the world.

Linguistically

As our nation is becoming more linguistically diverse, the issue of education becomes more charged. As teachers we have the responsibility to understand how best meet our students needs and how to provide the best education for all of them regardless of the language.

Exceptionalities

Classroom diversity promotes student’s growth and helps them reflect. As we have notices lately, students are entering job markets with diminishing concern for community boundaries. All of the children now have the same opportunities thanks to bringing diversity into the classrooms.

Imagine you are an eighth-grade social studies teacher whose students are learning about the voting process in the United States. Briefly describe, in a bulleted fashion, four ways you could make sure your lesson is culturally responsive?

• Get to know students: By getting to know other students not only academically, but also socially and emotionally, to learn about their families, cultures and interests.
• Understand cultural identity: To better serve our students, we must first understand our own cultural identity as teachers. We must stop and examine our own cultural behaviors, especially when it comes to managing behaviors and discipline in the class.
• Talk about different voting processes around the world: It is important that children are aware of what happens around the world and how sometimes things are done differently in different countries.
• Creating different teaching methods: We can create different methods to teach how to vote for what you think is best or like the best, for example; calling and responding, or building campaigns among students so that they can vote for their favorite book to read for the month and so forth.

Zahara, a sixth-grade student who recently moved to the United States from Kazakhstan, seems able to express her needs and desires socially with her new peers and teachers. However, she struggles to understand the content presented in class and in the text. 

After reading a little bit about the Kazakhstan culture I learned that people in her country tend to be less individualistic compared to countries here in the United States. Every country has different learning techniques and expectations, it could that is easier for her to say what she needs compared to express her words on paper.

Describe in a bulleted fashion at least three effective supports and strategies Zahara’s teacher might use to strengthen her learning outcomes.

1. Use various teaching techniques. – To be patient is key when teaching and helping children who are linguistically diverse. As teachers we could use different techniques to help our students on their learning outcomes, for example; to use games, to use electronic devices, to use daily experiences for learning.
2. Use her social skills to form a group of friends. – To create groups with a purpose. Maybe get together the children that she talks to the most and work together and motivate her and encourage her.
3. Give her special additional classes individually. – Being able to sit one on one with her might be very helpful for her. Since it’s a private time with her Zahara might be able to express better her struggles and concerns to the teacher and the teacher can understand her point of view better.

Conclusions

After going through all the readings and completing this week’s module, I have learned so much about how diversity in the classroom is helpful. I can now understand how integrated environments help children understand about other cultures and backgrounds. It is important for children and the teachers as well to collaborate and be able to communicate with all people regardless of the culture, race or religion. Diversity is important and all classrooms should have diversity and as teachers we should teach our children about it. Our children need to recognize all people as unique in their own ways.