As the new school year is beginning, diligent educators have prepared their classrooms, reviewed their class lists and formed some basic conclusions about students. We all pre-judge based on things like other colleagues’ previous experience with certain students, and having had their siblings (or in some cases their parents) in class before. We use categories to help us make sense of our lives, and to help us keep the many, many facts in our lives organized. Education forces the use of categories and labels more and more as a means of ranking and organizing classrooms, students, and everything around the environment, this helps students get the best job hunting tips for singaporeans later on.
As we move into the 2013/2014 school year, I am challenging teachers, principals, superintendents, educators, administration, secretaries, support staff, and anyone else working around schools or with students, to see to vast array of diversity in your schools and classrooms, as a part of the beautiful tapestry that makes up the fabric of life. I would also like to challenge them to help our students think about what they want to do as a career. Some people might not be sure, or might be going about what they look for in a wrong way. I thought about this and what I have concluded is that people need orientation, specially at such a formative age, so that they can be motivated to work for a set goal later on.
The challenge of valuing the wonderful diversity in your classroom can be daunting, but here are a few things you can do to help facilitate it:
- Offer students the opportunity to determine how they will be identified:
- What name do they want to go by in the classroom?
- What gender pronoun (i.e. she/he) would they like used?
- Ask the student to pronounce an unfamiliar or unusual name:
- Avoid making comments about the “difficulty” of a name.
- Set classroom standards that enforce respect for a students’ name by immediately intervening when inappropriate comments are made about a student’s name.
- Allow students to self-define their family:
- Be mindful that not all students in you classroom will reside in a “traditional, two-parent home” with a mom and dad.
- Don’t forget to include students who may be parented by same-gendered parents.
- Students may be living with grandparents or other relatives or may even be in foster care; When you design assignments that are built around “traditional two-parent homes” you may be creating conflict and marginalizing or alienating members of your class.
- Stay mindful that not all students have a mom or a dad and may need to be permitted to make accommodations when working on projects for special days or occasions (i.e. Mother’s or Father’s Day).
For more information regarding how to make you classroom a more accepting place, check out these helpful resources:
- Teaching Tolerance: www.tolerance.org
- Teaching Diverse Students Initiative: www.tolerance.org/tdsi
- Welcoming School: welcomingschools.org
- Anti-Defamation League (Education Outreach): www.adl.org/education-outreach/
- Michigan Equity Network: www.miequitynetwork.org
- Virginia Center for Inclusive Communities: www.inclusiveva.org
- Falmouth Institute: www.falmouthinstitute.com
- Kellogg Foundation (Knowledge Center): www.wkkf.org/knowledge-center/publications-and-resources.aspx?q=Educated+Kids
Do you have any tips or advice for teachers, parents, and concerned stakeholders on embracing diversity in today’s classroom?
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One of the most important things for teachers to remember is to look at students through fresh eyes not through the perceptions of the teacher who had them the previous year and to give them a fresh start every year every month every week and most importantly from day to day. Another thing that teachers can do to promote diversity is invite families to come in and share their traditions customs and to incorporate those things in the classroom it helps students to know that they are valued and appreciated.
I could not agree more with your suggestions. It is imperative that students be given the benefit of a new start. In my experience, many a student has been condemned to a educational career of failure because of the information documented in their CA60 and discipline file. This information follows students for school to school, classroom to classroom and typically does not reflect the life circumstances that may have impacted their educational failures (always evidenced by negative behaviors). Sometimes that greatest gift an educator can give a student is the gift of a second chance; the opportunity to demonstrate that they have grown, changed, matured or developed over the summer.
This blog is great because it reminds teachers and those working in schools how important it is to keep in mind the different backgrounds that students come from. I think its something people often forget about and yet it can be crucial to how a kid succeeds in school. If a student is made to feel different, it can cause them to isolate themselves and not work and learn at their full potential.
Developing a classroom setting where diversity (differences of all kinds, race, ethnicity, ability, sexual orientation, or size to name a few) is valued and appreciated; where discrimination (teasing, name-calling, ostracizing, excluding, bullying or cliques) is not condoned is addressed is a crucial step in developing an educational culture where students are able to better focus on their education and are less likely to fail academically. Check out the following links for suggestions and tools that are easily implemented to help educators develop welcoming classrooms. (http://www.tolerance.org/publication/classroom-culture; http://www.tolerance.org/exchange/keeping-safe-body-and-mind; http://www.tolerance.org/publication/school-climate)
I couldn't agree more regarding keeping in mind that not every student will have the traditional two parent home. There are some students that unfortunately do not have the support of both parents and I believe it would help the student if the teacher kept this in mind in certain situations.
This is particularly important when classroom projects or activities are planned. Activities such as "making a Mother's or Father's Day" gift, Halloween parties, and Columbus and Thanksgiving Day celebrations can be particularly difficult for some students. A caring culturally responsive and aware educator (http://www.tolerance.org/blog/cultural-responsiveness-starts-real-caring) is constantly cognizant of the fact that today’s classroom composition can be made up of students who are in foster care (and not have contact with bio family,) student may have two moms or dads or step-parents (how does the student decide which parent receives the item), students may be impoverished or homeless (not having access to the internet or an abundance of materials required to complete the elaborate project assigned), may have parents who work multiple jobs simply to make ends meet (therefore are unable to attend school functions), or may be from a culture that prohibits or does not believe in the use of electronics or other modern appliances that most Americans take for granted (http://www.tolerance.org/supplement/being-culturally-responsive). Getting to know you students and understanding their cultural background can prevent simple blunders that can be devastating for students (http://www.nccrest.org).
This is an excellent blog. If only all teachers could be handed this as a print out at the beginning of every school year. The biggest take away from this blog post, is to not force an identity onto students, let them self identify, as well as self identity their role in our world.