One of the biggest reasons that bullying and kids hurting each other is so prevalent, is because many of them feel misunderstood, unheard and unnoticed. When you teach about cultural diversity in your classroom, using the methods that I’ve outlined in the following section, it will help to remove some of those barriers. It will also foster a safe and inclusive environment for your students.
Promoting cultural diversity encourages children to think about others, their feelings, thought process, cultural habits and lifestyle.
If you go beyond merely celebrating multiculturalism and focus on the individual cultures within your classroom, you’ll educate your students about how to critically assess their knowledge about other people’s cultures through open and honest dialogue. This will also help them move past any learned stigmas and stereotypes, and it will prepare them for life beyond your classroom.
Let’s face it! When your kids learn more about each other, they’ll start to move past tolerating each other to truly accepting one another, which in turn, will help with your classroom management.
For these reasons, it’s important for us to teach our children about cultural diversity. For more information, check out the following four strategies.
Teaching Cultural Diversity Actionable Steps:
#1. Integrate Cultural Decor
Shake up your classroom decor by adding the languages that your students speak to the signs in your class or on your bulletin board. If your kids don’t know how to say or spell the words in their language, include their parents in it. This will bring harmony to your classroom and help everyone feel welcome.
In fact, include the work that your students do in the following step to your bulletin board as a way of integrating their cultures into your learning environment.
#2. Discuss Students’ Cultures
It can be overwhelming to teach about cultural diversity as there’s so many cultures out there. The simplest way to approach this is to let your children do the teaching.
Have them research their own cultures using a fun project-based learning method. They can document their learning and share it with a small group until they are ready to present it to the class.
The following resources are easy-to-use. You just need to print them out and put them in your students’ binders or folders. They come with detailed instructions so you don’t have to worry about how to teach it your students. This will take you a few weeks so you can easily integrate it into your writing, communication, social studies, art and presentation lessons.
Click on the image that below to get the resource that best meets the needs of your class.
#3. Take Culturally Relevant Field Trips
Another great way to teach children about cultural diversity, is to celebrate cultural holidays in the classroom, it’s even better to take your children out to community events or organizations to celebrate. This way, they’ll be immersed in the culture with people from all walks of life. They can really get a feel for what it’s like to indulge in the celebration, while furthering their connection with and education about the culture.
Most cultural organizations will have dates and times of events on their website. Many places, like museums, have year-round guided tours. For more information, contact your local cultural organization to see what’s available for your students.
#4. Assess Students’ Cultural Knowledge
At the beginning, throughout, and after completing all of the aforementioned steps or at least one of them, have your students do a quick self assessment to assess their understanding and gradual development of each other’s cultures. You can use the following resource for the assessment. This is a no-prep and print-and-go resource so it’s easy to use.
This is also important for your teaching practice as it will help guide your cultural diversity lessons. You can also use this in a child’s portfolio or report card. If you cannot include attachments with the report card, use your student’s actual words in quotations so that parents can learn about their child’s growth as well.
Teaching Cultural Diversity Recap:
Let’s recap really quickly. Today, we looked at the following:
- The importance of teaching students about cultural diversity.
- How to teach about cultural diversity in the classroom: integrate cultural decor, discuss students’ cultures, take culturally relevant field trips, and assess students’ cultural knowledge.
Free Resources:
If your children are struggling to hand in assignments on time, check out the following video training: 3 Steps to Teach Children How to Overcome Procrastination to Increase Productivity.
In the mean time, if you’re feeling stressed out, overwhelmed and burnout, then I encourage you to check out the following: FREE MASTERCLASS: Systematic Plan to Super Passionate.
Next Steps:
For calm down areas on a budget, for your students who have autism, CLICK HERE.
If you found this video beneficial, would you do me a favor? Share this with your family, your friends, your loved ones, your co-workers or someone who you think could benefit from this. Thank you!
I’ll see you next Friday at 5:30pm PST.
Until I see you next time, remember to create, experience & teach from the heart.
Take care,
Charlotte
Disclaimer: I’m a teacher and a parent. I’m not a medical professional, so please don’t take this as medical advice. The advice that I provide in my videos and online are strategies that I have used in my own class or at home that have worked beautifully. Make sure to adapt these strategies for your individual child. Thank you!
