Final Reflection for Diversity in the Classroom
hen we conceptualize about life in perception of diversification and multiculturalism, I find that it has been divided into two main parts. The first half of my life I grew up in a culturally limited environment that did not promote open-mindedness and appreciation of diversity. Therefore, I had a minimal understanding of diversity and did not know of all the good that comes from it. Once I entered college, I was fortunate to come across such diversified people and have roommates from across the world. I also made close relations with people from several other walks of life and had continuous cultural experiences that reshaped how I think of diverse people, cultures, and the world.
Even though I had grown a lot before this course, I still had not realized the barriers that I was making at times between myself other ethnicity due to unconscious ethnocentrism. It was not until I read McIntosh’s (2008) article on ‘white privilege’ that I was able to see how our society is still continuously discriminating against non-Caucasian ethnicity in every day experiences. By not acknowledging these discriminatory instances, our society is protecting the unearned advantage that Caucasians have over other ethnicity. I have personally learned from this realization, stopped denying ‘white privilege’, and seek to apply this knowledge to help reshape our social structure to include equality and privilege for all.
Cultural Differences
Through the personal and professional growth that I have gained from this piece of art, I will be better placed to positively impact my students to value the diversity that this world has to offer and prepare them to succeed in a global society. Diversity comes in many forms, from race, gender, class, religion, disability, body image, and sexual orientation. As a future teacher I have the ability to break down the barriers of diversity in the lives of many students, and help put an end to discrimination and inequality. I will work to create classes that are accepting and respectful of diversity, encourage positive communication, include multicultural curriculum, and provide various assessments to fit the diverse learning styles of my students. This course has inspired me to make it my goal to increase student knowledge and openness of multiculturalism/diversity.
In order to have multicultural education, ‘teachers will have to believe that all students can learn, regardless of their social class or ethnic group membership, and that knowledge is a social construction that has social, political, and normative assumptions’ (Banks, 2008, p. 41). With this in mind, I realize that I have grown in a professional sense in that I now see the negative impact that stereotyping can have on teacher expectations for student learning. In order to believe that all students can learn no matter what their background is, I cannot stereotype my students, for in doing so I might create incorrectly lowered expectations for certain groups. An article by Lee Jussim (1990) on the role of expectancy discussed how erroneous expectations can lead to self-fulfilling prophecies. Jussim presented an example of a study where teachers were told that some students were late bloomers, (when in reality the students were randomly designated as being late bloomers), which led teachers to lower their expectations for those students. As a result the students with this designation scored significantly lower on average than the students without this label. Therefore, I must not apply stereotypical expectations onto my students because by simply doing so, I may cause them to perform poorly. As a future teacher I must treat each student individually by avoiding stereotypes, and I must adapt my teaching methods to fit the learning styles/educational needs that are needed for each of my students so that they are all able to learn well. By encouraging positive communication and making conscious efforts to understand my students regardless of their cultural background, I will be building a diversity-affirmative, culturally inclusive class.
Communication
Communication is one of the most important aspects to consider when creating a class that values and respects diversity. That is because the way in which we communicate with one another determines what relationships we build between one another. Addressing appropriate and accepting communication to a class is one of the most useful preventative measures that a teacher can take towards helping to deter future discrimination, while promoting acceptance and understanding of one another. One of my goals is to encourage positive forms of communication and establish rules against disrespectful and offensive communication.
Right from the start of my classes, I will teach my students to treat each other with great respect and acceptance through their communication. I will establish rules pertaining to language/communication used in my classroom in which discriminatory language will not be tolerated. Therefore, students will know not to use words such as ‘gay’, ‘hobo’, ‘retard’, ‘fatso’, ‘cracker’, or ‘psycho’. No discriminatory joking or sayings will be permitted. Also I will encourage students to speak kindly to each other, and emphasize this with posters up on the walls with phrases such as, ‘Think before you speak’. Hurtful, judgmental, or negative comments from peers can have a profound impact on the self-esteem of students and I will directly work to prevent my students from discriminatory bullying against each other. My goal is to prevent discriminatory comments or actions from ever being made, rather than waiting for an issue to occur and then addressing the topic of appropriate communication.
.Gender disparity
These are products of the evolutionary process of sexual selection. By contrast, the term gender differences refers to average group differences between males and females that are presumably based on sexually. Therefore, it is important that the physical arrangement of the class is setup in a way that invites and maximizes student learning. According to an article written on the value of assessing learning spaces, ‘Research on cognition and learning calls for classrooms to become areas that facilitate performance’ (Harris & Cullen, 2008, p. 6). Arranging students based on gender can lead to their inability to perform better. Harris and Cullen (2008) also noted that, ‘Teachers must recognize that the arrangement of a classroom has a symbolic impact on students’ expectations about learning and their willingness to engage actively’ (p. 6).Based on the arguments, I totally resolute that gender disparity should not be taken into consideration in our learning institutions as human kinds are the same even in their abilities.
Conclusion
This article has enabled me to realize my personal barriers to diversity and overcoming upon them both personally and professionally. I have learned to create multicultural lesson plans, arranging my students without gender disparity, supplement my materials to represent all diversities of people in my class, teach my students according to the cultural learning styles that they need, and provide a wide range of assessments. As a future educator, I aspire to apply what I have learned in this class to shape my students to become culturally sensitive, knowledgeable, and respectful. It is through the integration of all the aspects discussed that teachers can create classrooms were students learn to value and respect diversity and conceptualize with ability to actively conform to our global society. W
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