DIVERSITY OF LEARNERS
The teacher understands and has knowledge of multicultural theories, diversity perspectives, culturally releveant teaching practices, inclusive strategies, and the foundations of education.
When teaching, nothing matters more than being open-minded and creating an environment where all students feel included, accepted and loved for simply being who they are. For this reason, a true commitment to teaching students ABOUT diversity and other cultures, as well as designing a multicultural curriculum is key.
Nothing can alienate students quite like constant resources depicting students and families that are absolutely nothing like them or classroom material that they simply cannot culturally relate to.
As a result, I've found that it's important to be highly intentional about the materials one selects for lesson plans. Select materials that really honor and celebrate your students. Use narrative inquiry and get to know their personal life stories! Above all else, make the lesson plans and curriculum a fair representation of who they're designed for--- the students!
This applies to more than just race and ethnicity. Religion, skin tone, languages spoken, socioeconomic status, disabilities, classroom skill abilities--- these are all other key factors to keep in mind.
Although many of the classes I've worked in while in New York City tend to have large African or South American immigrant student populations, I've learned that it's not only learning about their OWN culture or celebrating THEIR diversity that students enjoy. Students love learning about other, different cultures too.
During my first semester of student teaching, as the class did a Social Studies unit plan on Asia, I began bringing in fun toys, artwork, money and pictures of myself in Asia from some time I've spent in Asia. I shared pictures from Japanese schools that I spent time in and pictures of Japanese families. The children were absolutely fascinated and could not get enough. This real-life connection to the text kept them intrigued and engaged.
One thing that the students kept bringing up repeatedly were chopsticks. They were obsessed with them. Listening to my students, I decided to create a lesson plan that would share with them the history of chopsticks culturally and demonstrate proper use. This included fun facts and the cultural "dos" and don'ts" of chopsticks which present as quite similar to superstitions.
Of course, during the lesson plan video clips were used (which I stopped after important points to discuss) and they also had a chance to practice using chopsticks themselves!
When teaching, nothing matters more than being open-minded and creating an environment where all students feel included, accepted and loved for simply being who they are. For this reason, a true commitment to teaching students ABOUT diversity and other cultures, as well as designing a multicultural curriculum is key.
Nothing can alienate students quite like constant resources depicting students and families that are absolutely nothing like them or classroom material that they simply cannot culturally relate to.
As a result, I've found that it's important to be highly intentional about the materials one selects for lesson plans. Select materials that really honor and celebrate your students. Use narrative inquiry and get to know their personal life stories! Above all else, make the lesson plans and curriculum a fair representation of who they're designed for--- the students!
This applies to more than just race and ethnicity. Religion, skin tone, languages spoken, socioeconomic status, disabilities, classroom skill abilities--- these are all other key factors to keep in mind.
Although many of the classes I've worked in while in New York City tend to have large African or South American immigrant student populations, I've learned that it's not only learning about their OWN culture or celebrating THEIR diversity that students enjoy. Students love learning about other, different cultures too.
During my first semester of student teaching, as the class did a Social Studies unit plan on Asia, I began bringing in fun toys, artwork, money and pictures of myself in Asia from some time I've spent in Asia. I shared pictures from Japanese schools that I spent time in and pictures of Japanese families. The children were absolutely fascinated and could not get enough. This real-life connection to the text kept them intrigued and engaged.
One thing that the students kept bringing up repeatedly were chopsticks. They were obsessed with them. Listening to my students, I decided to create a lesson plan that would share with them the history of chopsticks culturally and demonstrate proper use. This included fun facts and the cultural "dos" and don'ts" of chopsticks which present as quite similar to superstitions.
Of course, during the lesson plan video clips were used (which I stopped after important points to discuss) and they also had a chance to practice using chopsticks themselves!
chopsticks_lesson_plan_.doc | |
File Size: | 23 kb |
File Type: | doc |