Diversity, Cultural Understanding, and Global Awareness

Diversity, Cultural Understanding, and Global Awareness

As an educator I would model and promote diversity in the classroom by creating a collaborative project that would involve showcasing diversity. Students would be required to create a video using the free app iMovie to create a video presentation related to their culture. Students would include in the film their parent or guardian discussing their ethnic background. The film can include cultural beliefs, foods, and languages associated with their cultural.  As an educator having the students explain their cultural heritage allows for a deeper understanding and appreciation of what each student brings to the classroom. This project would be a good collaborative piece to allow for open-ended questions to give students the freedom to discuss diversity in the classroom. To further promote/model diversity in the classroom could be to have translators and translation apps in the classroom to address language barriers. As an educator I need the students and parents to feel a part of the learning process without the worry of not be able to be heard in the classroom. Including translators in the classroom, would show the parent and student that their voice matters in the learning process. Notably, learning is universal, and it takes a collaborative approach to making learning accessible to all cultures.

Secondly, as an educator I would address cultural understanding by finding learning material that represented all students in the classroom. For example, if teaching reading, I could include different books from all around the world to be read. As an educator, having all students exposed to different literature around the world, would promote unity in the classroom. Each student can relate in some fashion to the reading material and learn to embrace another culture learning curriculum. Another tactic to promote culture understanding as an educator would be to have students work in groups. By assigning specific tasks to each group, students can learn how to express their problems and solutions in a team environment. Students can learn from one another how to resolve conflicts and value everybody’s contributions within a group. Lastly, another collaborative project would be to have each student draw something related to their heritage. Students can use the free app Drawing Something to share their artwork digitally to engage the classroom. Gives each student an opportunity to show visually how each culture operates and provides students with valuable information to understand their classmates. Overall, to understand another person culture is to have an open line of communication to learn from one another.

Lastly, to address global awareness, students can use online apps like a wiki to collaborate and communicate with other students around the world. The wiki allows for students to interact with other international students to form a social bond.  As an educator, another tool to address global awareness is Skype. With Skype, students can speak with other students around the world in real-time. Skype enables students to a have visual of the student they are speaking with to make it a real virtual interaction. Wiki and Skype provide students a way to reach other students around the world to understand how they learn and live. Overall, as an educator to promote global awareness is using online social media apps to interact with other students around the world to learn their cultural history and learning curriculum.