Culture Diversity

The diversity of students in today's classrooms is a growing trend in our country and the importance of developing curricula, teaching strategies, and policies to help all students succeed in school. When thinking or keeping these students in mind, we have to understand what is involved and how we can move forward with teaching all students successfully, with academics in mind. Having several different ethnic groups within the class, you have to be aware and accept the changes that may need to be made to the classroom.

As the teacher, you have to be ready to implement change within the classroom as well as prepare your students for this transition and acceptance of classmates. From day one, we as a whole (teacher and students), will understand each other as individuals and respect each other and the difference in backgrounds. In reality we are faced with a growing trend of a large diverse population in every school and most classrooms across the country. According to Johnson, et al "provision of social justice and equality is a moral and ethical responsibility of educators and the goal is to help all students strive for a successful academic journey, regardless of their socioeconomic background, ethnicity, race language, gender, or religion. (Johnson, et al,. 2005). This would relate to the understanding that all students have the opportunity to receive a free education.

There has to be a conscious effort in creating a welcoming environment for learning regardless of the ethnic background. As students learn the socioeconomical background of each other, it will be very important for all students to acknowledge and understand the cultural and linguistic backgrounds of one another. They don't necessarily have to speak it or know it fluently, but respectfully, they will acknowledge and respect one another as classmates. Effective literacy instruction builds upon the cultural and linguistic backgrounds, and helps build on the prior knowledge of the students within the classroom.

"As teachers gain insight into and acceptance of various cultures, they should develop an all-inclusive acceptance of their diverse students, it is important to have an atmosphere that is conducive to learning, accepting and caring. AS the teacher, you must be mindful and create a lesson plan that discusses the cultures of the students in the class. This would give us the class an opportunity to discuss the different religious beliefs of the individual and community as a whole. This subject would have to be very limited, because it is a private school and you should be very discreet within discuss religion. We should also as a class is able to reflect and speak about socioeconomic issues and how they affect students, and the differences in gender. .

In my class I would have or create a multicultural bulletin board, which would contain information and differences among the students and the different cultures within the class. This will allow the students to be very creative in how they represent themselves and their cultural ethnicity. The boards would allow students to identify their holidays, stories and possibly the foods they may eat. While educating these students, we must not forget while teaching students about diversity, we must help the students understand biases, and understand how to treat everyone fair. To reach all students effectively, educators should understand the communication level of their students and observe their learning, to develop plans based on their learning styles. The educator should also have to know and understand how their second-language learning affects literacy acquisition. Although, English is the language of instruction in most public schools, most of the time these children are exposed to their native language more than