One of the best things about America is that everyone is different. We have been likened to a "melting pot", referring to how many different nationalities and cultures all come together to form one nation. American classrooms are now more culturally diverse than ever. As a future teacher, some questions come to mind. How can I embrace multicultural learning in my classroom? How can I make learning about --and embracing-- so many cultures interesting and exciting for my future students?
As I've mentioned before, respect for others is always going to be the most important thing in my classroom. Even if someone is very different, they should never be made fun of, and all students need to feel safe and welcome in my classroom. I think that a lot of disrespectful behavior from children can be from not really knowing about the person who is "different". I think that by learning about different cultures, my students and I will be able to better understand each other, and therefore, multicultural learning will have a positive effect on the class as a whole. Being able to interact with one another and understand the cultures of everyone in our class is very important.
The students need to recognize that every culture is important and understand that everyone is different and all of these nationalities and cultures come together to make our society the way it is today. They should also realize that while everyone is from a different culture, stereotyping fellow students is never acceptable.
As far as actually incorporating the study of different cultures goes, I think that inviting visitors into the class is a great way to help my students learn. They can listen to a visitor talk all about his/her culture and lifestyle, and then the students will be able to ask questions to our special guest. Maybe we can even see how people dress from the country of the visitor, or have a special snack from that country.
Another fun way to learn about culture would be to have each student pick a different country to study, and go get books from the library and research the country. they could create a poster about the country, and then when the projects were done, our class could have a culture studies day where all the students present what they learned, and perhaps dress up like the traditional people from their chosen countries do.
Combining these two ideas, as well as using traditional textbook/classroom learning will hopefully give my students a good view of the different cultures that surround us. Knowing about the people we live and interact with is very important for students to learn about.
