Being Different

Posting on behalf of Autumn Baltimore

Using one lesson in a universal design was the way to go when teaching students of all backgrounds. Universal design was a method that used a set of goals and instruction to develop curriculum that gave all individuals equal opportunities to learn. Although I teach one class now in my role as an Instructional Coach, I find that my freshman English class of twenty-six students was not as diverse by way of race, but more diverse by way of culture. With this, maintaining a class that was not only ethically sensitive, but culturally sensitive as well was necessary for motivating students to learn. For instance, I have ten White students, yet out of the ten students, one was American and the others are Bosnian, Albanian, and Italian. Ensuring that all my students including the students that fall into a separate sub category within one race was a priority.

Interestingly, making sure students know that you appreciate and honor both their personality and most importantly their ethnic and cultural background helped to build a community of trust. My classroom and the school were described as multiethnic community because there were a vast number of diverse ethnicities (Howard, 2007). For this reason, our Principal implemented professional development that was structured around supporting a multiethnic population. Generally, this was an appropriate step because many schools were becoming diverse not only in race, but in culture, as well. Yet many teachers have little experience with creating an environment that is culturally sensitive. Furthermore, there is a lack of understanding about students with diverse linguistics, as well. Paris (2011) suggested that we as a teachers and people need to think about how language, ethnicity, and multilingual speech impact the way students learn and communicate with each other. Long gone are the days where teachers assumed that students could be labeled as simply White and Black, but we needed to be cognizant of all backgrounds and languages while we are teaching.

In truth, being able to communicate with students that come from multiple walks of life could be realized by understanding who they were socially. Many students do identify with their culture and many do not, yet they all want to be socially accepted. Therefore, I found that relating topics and lessons around what they were interested in allowed me to teach to all of the students effectively. For example, when reciting Romeo and Juliet the students were put into groups of three and silently played out the lines within in the scene, and everyone else had to guess what they were doing and what scene they were portraying. Truthfully, all the students looked funny, but all were committed, and those who had problems speaking the language or interpreting the text could ask for help with their partners and use their artistic abilities to act out their lines. Instead of differentiating, I decided to use the universal design approach, which allowed all the students regardless of their ethnic or culturally linguistically diverse background to succeed in the task and collaborate. Respecting students’ different cultural backgrounds provided opportunities for innovation and creativity not only from the teacher, but also from the students as well (Moskal & Keneman, 2011).

References

Howard, G. R. (2007). As diversity grows, so must we. Educational Leadership, 64(6), 16–22. 
Retrieved from the Walden Library databases.

Moskal, M. K., & Keneman, A. F. (2011). Literacy leadership to support reading improvement: Intervention programs and balanced instruction. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Used by permission of Guilford Press.

Paris, D. (2011). Language across difference (p. 15). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.