Introduction
Education is an essential step in children’s development; thus, universal access to it is critical. The United States is a country of multiple racial, ethnic, religious, and economic groups (Gollnick & Chinn, 2017). This paper aims to define the concept of diversity in a classroom and discuss culturally responsive teaching using specific examples. Since the U.S. became the home country for people from around the globe, the multiethnic and multicultural environment demands the adjustment of teaching methods.
Diverse classrooms in the U.S.
Diversity within the class can be described as the group of children of varying ethnicities, cultures, family incomes, household conditions, and physical disabilities. Teachers should be aware of these distinctions and the unique situations of each student to be able to maximize the efficiency of the teaching process (Gollnick & Chinn, 2017). Educators should convey the idea that despite the ethical distinctions, there are many commonalities between the students in a specific class (Gollnick & Chinn, 2017). They should encourage celebrating the uniqueness of minorities and respect for the dominant culture.
Most schools have become aware of the diversity among students; thus, they strive to provide equal access to educational materials for all. However, some teachers are prejudiced toward learners of non-white ethnicity and who are not native English speakers (Mellom et al., 2018). For example, misconceptions about Latino Americans resulted in a widespread negative attitude towards them, including school teachers who might view children’s cultural background as an obstacle to learning (Mellom et al., 2018). Fortunately, in the school where I work, racial, gender, cultural, and socioeconomic disparities play an essential role in teaching because many instructors speak more than one language.
To address the lack of equal educational opportunities, the school can develop culturally-responsive instructional materials and suggest teachers learn a new language. According to Gay (2018), students became more energized and encouraged when their cultural experiences were incorporated into courses. Furthermore, learning another language by an instructor allows for an ideological shift in teachers’ mindsets, enabling their comprehension of non-native children’s situations (Mellom et al., 2018). Indeed, the latter is broadly applied in the school where I am doing the fieldwork, and this strategy effectively creates an empathetic connection between educators and students.
All the literature I read about diversity in classrooms will be helpful in my work. Specifically, the suggestions provided in the paper by Ferri et al. (2020) and the book by Khalifa (2020) will help me organize my work around gaps in my student’s knowledge and their cultural identities. Moreover, I learned that many of my future colleagues still have prejudices about students of cultural and ethnic backgrounds different from theirs (Mellom et al., 2018). These stereotypes lower the efficacy of the student learning process in American schools because they affect schoolchildren’s self-esteem (Gay, 2018). Hence, the lack of diversity may be problematic for the U.S. because many teachers cannot gain experience instructing learners of various backgrounds. It is crucial to address children’s individual needs in multicultural groups. Furthermore, it is also vital to raise this issue among colleagues to reduce teacher bias and negative attitudes. I found three resources that may apply to this problem.
The first resource that may be appropriate for middle-school children is the study by Ferri et al., titled “Online learning and emergency remote teaching: Opportunities and challenges in emergencies.” This paper provides recommendations for teachers on how to address diversities in Italian schools better. Specifically, they suggest organizing children according to their levels and learning needs.
The second source is the book Culturally responsive school leadership by Khalifa, which addressed the problem of prejudices towards students of color. The author claims that studying and understanding schoolchildren’s historical and cultural backgrounds enables better collaboration between school leaders, teachers, learners, and their families (Khalifa, 2020). Overall, culturally-responsive leadership should become an essential component of schools, where children will feel understood and motivated to perform better.
The third resource is the article by Mellom et al. titled “They come with nothing: How professional development in a culturally responsive pedagogy shapes teacher attitudes towards Latino/English language learners.” This paper addresses the essence of the problem of the bias of teachers who are native speakers toward Latino immigrants in English language courses.
In the context of a diverse classroom, culturally responsive teaching is a vital tool. This concept “can be defined as using the cultural knowledge, prior experiences, frames of reference, and performance styles of ethnically diverse students to make learning encounters more relevant to effective” (Gay, 2018, p. 36). I chose resources related to this strategy primarily based on the author’s experience teaching in diverse classes. Thus, these books and articles mainly represent their views of this issue in the United States and the outcomes they observed after implementing culturally responsive teaching. However, the point of authority in these resources is evidence-based literature that the authors used to research the problem and develop an intervention. I will utilize these sources to improve my instructional methodology in multicultural classrooms by using the provided recommendations. Specifically, I will try to understand the individual differences of various groups of students, and I will strive to integrate their cultural and social peculiarities into the learning process.
Conclusion
In summary, diverse classrooms have become a common phenomenon in the U.S. due to a high number of citizens of various races, ethnicities, religions, languages, and cultures. However, the problem of prejudices and stereotyping among teachers toward non-native speakers still exists. Therefore, it is crucial to introduce the method of culturally responsive teaching in schools to help educators and learners connect. This connection will not only improve student-teacher relations but should also result in improvement in educational outcomes.
References
Ferri, F., Grifoni, P., & Guzzo, T. (2020). Online learning and emergency remote teaching: Opportunities and challenges in emergency situations. Societies, 10(4), 1-18.
Gay, G. (2018). Culturally responsive teaching: Theory, research, and practice. Teachers College Press.
Gollnick, D. M., & Chinn, P. C. (2017). Multicultural education in a pluralistic society (10th ed.). Pearson.
Khalifa, M. (2020). Culturally responsive school leadership. Harvard Education Press.
Mellom, P. J., Straubhaar, R., Balderas, C., Ariail, M., & Portes, P. R. (2018). “They come with nothing:” How professional development in a culturally responsive pedagogy shapes teacher attitudes towards Latino/a English language learners. Teaching and Teacher Education, 71, 98-107.