Cultural Diversity

Despite the disproportionately below average achievement of students of a minority race, disagreement still exists over including multicultural education in curriculums. Culturally responsive teaching holds that explicit knowledge about cultural diversity is necessary to meet the needs of all students today (Gay, 2002). In order to accommodate for cultural diversity, this type of teaching method is imperative. Culturally responsive teaching includes: a knowledge base about cultural diversity, including ethnic and cultural diversity in the curriculum, displaying care, constructing learning communities and reacting to cultural diversity in the presentation of instruction (Gay, 2002). Culturally responsive teaching is defined as:

"Using the cultural characteristics, experiences, and perspectives of ethnically diverse students as conduits for teaching them more effectively" (Gay, 2002, pg. 106).

There are many ways you can create cultural diversity in the classroom such as: Labeling things in your classroom with other languages, have bulletin boards in your classroom that would promote different cultures, they also can positive and purposeful activities and events involving culturally diverse people. Include, for example, newspaper articles (local and national) reporting newsworthy events or accomplishments that involve people of color, photographs of community leaders from culturally diverse backgrounds, student-made posters depicting culturally relevant historical events, and original stories and poems written by students with culturally diverse themes. There are also many activates you can do with your class that can be done in a group the reason for this is, that it can bring students together within a variety of supportive and collaborative learning activities. The use of this kind of learning group allows all children to see the benefits of bringing together people with diverse backgrounds for problem-solving tasks. They use listening, speaking, reading, and writing together to achieve common goals and in the process become accountable since their performance affects group outcomes. They become active language users and learn to respect each other's opinions (Bromley, 1998). For example, the I-Search Strategy (Leu & Kinzer, 1999) is an interdisciplinary, student-centered inquiry process that emphasizes participation and sharing of research findings in small cooperative learning groups, as well as in whole-group settings. To implement this strategy, children choose a motivating theme; with the teacher's assistance, they formulate their own research plans; next, they follow and revise their plans as they gather information, and then they prepare papers, posters, or presentations using computer soft- ware, or they prepare oral reports. Lastly I found, having the children, write in a journal, is beneficial with the older students because it allows you to understand the thoughts and feelings of each