Blog 2: Welcoming Diversity

Over the last week, I have been overwhelmed with an influx of information about the diverse learners that I am going to encounter throughout my teaching career. Growing up in a small town with many likeminded individuals, the students that I encountered throughout my own educational experience were a fairly homogenous group, so my teachers did not focus as much as they should have on incorporating a diverse curriculum. As I reflect on my own educational experiences and how I should create a welcoming environment for diverse learners, I feel that I first need to spend some time learning about other cultures myself.  It’s not that I am unaccepting or discriminatory of diverse individuals, but I am ignorant about many other cultures that I have not been exposed to. Creating a warm and welcoming classroom for diverse learners begins with me doing research about the different cultures that will be represented in my classroom so that I am able to accommodate and teach my students to accept the differences their diverse peers have in their mannerisms, cultural beliefs, and linguistic qualities.

In his book The English Teacher’s Companion: A Complete Guide to Classroom, Curriculum, and the Profession, Jim Burke (2008) writes that teachers should “Learn what [they] can about their [students] culture. Have them write you a letter (in lieu of some other assignment) in which they tell you where they are from and what their lives are like here so far” (383). This should not replace doing my own independent research about my students’ cultures, but I think that this is a great way to supplement my learning about their culture. No matter how much research I do on my own, I am not going to be able to pinpoint exactly what my students’ cultures are like because everyone’s culture can be slightly different. Each student is unique because they all come from different backgrounds, even within the same country. One student might come from a wealthy family that values education, while another may live in poverty and value family time and practice a different religion. These students would have clear differences in their cultural practices. Rather than just asking students who are culturally different from the majority culture in my classroom to do this assignment, I would ask all of my students to do the assignment because even within American culture there are many subgroups such as religion and socioeconomic statuses that contribute to cultural differences. Taking this a step further, I would love to use this as an opportunity to have students share their cultures with each other by having them do an informal presentation about what they wrote in their letters.  This would show that I value hearing about their cultures and create the expectation that I want my students to share and embrace their own cultural differences, as well as their classmates’ cultural differences.

It is also important to me to represent a variety of cultures in my classroom both visually and in the learning content. Literature is not unique to white males, yet the majority of posters that I can remember seeing in English classrooms and reading about have been white males. I want all of my students to strive for success in reading and writing, so it is vital to expose them to images of writers who have succeeded from a variety of races and cultures. I never want my students to feel like because they have never seen someone from their own background being a proficient writer that they cannot be, so I intend to post images of authors and books that derive from a variety of cultures around my classroom. Not only is important to make the classroom visually welcoming to diverse cultures, but I also want to incorporate literature that is representative of diverse cultures. It is difficult enough for students to assimilate into a new culture, but when this new culture just ignores their primary culture, it must be incredibly frustrating. Incorporating a multitude of poems, short stories, and excerpts from novels written by individuals from a variety of races, countries, and socioeconomic statuses will make it so that my students are all being expose to something that is familiar to their own personal culture, in addition to learning about life from the perspective of someone who is different from them. This will hopefully help my students to assimilate more smoothly because they can talk about their own culture in addition to the new culture they are trying to figure out, as well as help my American students empathize with what it must be like for my culturally different students to read and learn about a new culture that they know nothing about.

Burke (2008) also presents the idea that it is important to “Allow them to write first drafts in the primary language as a means of getting their ideas together” (383). I love this idea and plan to use it in my classroom because the writing process is difficult enough to grasp for students who speak English, so I cannot imagine what it is like trying to learn the writing process while trying to learn English and translate ideas from one language to English. I know that when I write in foreign language classes I often substitute strong ideas for weaker ones just because I do not know how to say the more complex idea. I don’t want my students to struggle to present their best work because of a language barrier. The most important part of writing is just getting your ideas out on paper, and if a student can’t do that because they do not understand the language well enough, it is going to be very difficult for them to succeed. Writing in their primary language first will enable them to present their best ideas, which is what I want to grade them on. Forcing them to translate their ideas into English initially will inadvertently result in me grading their ability to speak English, rather than their ability to convey their ideas in a paper, because then they can only write what they know how to say in English.

Above all, I want all of my students to realize that they can be successful in school regardless of what background they come from. All students deserve to have an equal chance of success and to have a safe and welcoming learning environment. My hope is that all of my students come into my classroom feeling comfortable and confident in their ability to achieve academic success.