With so many culturally diverse students in our schools today, we must be award of the values, beliefs, and customs that these children bring into our classrooms. Teachers must take the initiative and learn as much as they can about each of these students for them to be successful. Speaking from being a third grade teacher for the past eight years, I know that every one of my students wants to feel important. They all want to tell me about their lives, their toys, their families, and the culturally diverse students I"ve had are no different. It's up to us, the teachers, to make sure our students feel welcomed and supported in the classroom. When I had a little girl in my class that hardly spoke any English, I found a story in our basal that had some Spanish words. During our shared reading time, I began by telling my regular students that we would let Veronica say all the Spanish words when we read the story aloud. When we got to a word, I just pointed to it, and she would say it. At the end of the story, I know that Veronica didn't understand what was read, but she did know that she was included in reading the story, and the other students gave her an applause. Every time we read that same story, I think of her and I don't know of any way we could have read that story without her that year!
What do I do wrong? My first year at my school, I have five students from five different cultures. I did not get to learn about each one of them. Looking back, I realize that I did get close to some of those students. Now I realize that it was because the parents reached out to me, too. I did ask the students about their countries, home life, customs, foods, etc., but I wish I had made more of an effort to have shared what I found out with the rest of the class. It would have been a good idea to have made a bulletin board about their home countries. This way, I could have made each child feel more important in that we were learning about their customs and backgrounds. I also learned that African Americans learn better with music, movement, working cooperatively, and have a harder time with deadlines.
In the future, I will make more of an effort to find out about the country, customs, beliefs, foods, etc. of my culturally different students. I have one student now from another country, and I asked him to bring in something from Poland to share with the class. He did bring me several children's books (written in Polish) to share. (I wrote about this earlier.) Since I do not speak the language, we did a picture walk through a few of the books and made up stories. His mother wants me to have these books, so I'll put them away and share them through the years. This was just a small way of letting Lucas and his family know that I was interested in learning more about his country/culture. I do not have any African Americans in my classroom this year, but I learned from my diversity class and from our current textbook that I need to play music and have students work cooperatively when possible. mI have been playing music for years when my students write. Now all of my students want the music playing when they write, and we work in groups whenever possible. I realize that it doesn't matter where you're from, a lot of students like the same things.
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