Teaching Cross-Cultural Awareness to Children and Families

Teaching Cross-Cultural Awareness to Children and their Families
In most U.S. public schools today, there is a wide variety of different cultures and ethnic backgrounds within the student population, teachers, faculty and staff. The number of immigrant students from other countries entering the school system continues to increase rapidly where it brings a great challenge of incorporating culture awareness within the school environment. According to Vanderbilt University professors Victoria J. Risko and Doris Walker-Dalhouse, “Students whose language, ethnicity, and race are not represented in the school’s dominant culture experience varying degree of success in reading achievement, resulting in persistent gaps in reading achievement and disproportionally higher dropout rates in U.S. high schools” (2007). Teachers and other school community personnel must be able to demonstrate a sense of cultural awareness and modeling amongst the students, school community, and their families. Teachers should be positive role models by respecting cultural differences and promoting social justice within their classrooms and school settings.
Before educators can promote cultural awareness and modeling in the school environment, they must reflect on their own cultural identity and dispositions about their own ethnic background by identifying themselves within that ethnic group. Also, educators must come to terms with their own prejudices and stereotypes they have of certain cultural groups because it can reflect how they approach and treat their students from different racial and ethnic barriers. Teachers must be accepting to the fact that they have biases against certain cultural groups so that they are able to come up with strategies that can overcome these prejudices (Gollnick & Chin 2009). Teachers and other educators should prepare themselves to enhance their essential knowledge, skills, and disposition of working with students of culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds because these are the children who need to feel a sense of acceptance and belongingness in the classroom community for them to succeed academically. One way teachers and their school communities can get prepared to teach students from diverse background is by taking the initiative of getting to know the students and their families who attend their schools through on-going welcoming and cultural activities.
According to Darling-Hammond, Wise, and Klein, “If all children are to be effectively taught, teachers must be prepared to address the substantial diversity in experience students bring with them to school-the wide range of languages, cultures, home conditions, learning styles, exceptionalities, abilities, and intelligences (1995).” Also, to be effective in teaching culturally and linguistically diverse children, teachers and school administrators should offer professional development workshops that deal with learning to teach a multicultural atmosphere. These professional development workshops can help teachers learn to incorporate multicultural educational strategies into their classrooms curriculum such as cooperative learning strategies, classroom discussions, access to children‘s literature relating to various ethnic backgrounds on a personal account, and ways to promote school wide acceptance and awareness.
Schools are institutions that should promote social justice within its community and environment. Even though it is the teacher’s role to help encourage cultural awareness within the classroom, the school community must also actively participate in the acceptance of diversity within the school population. School counselors and administrations can develop staff training workshops which might focus on building democracy and social justice within the school community. The administration can set up school wide discussions or debates that deal with certain issues affecting their neighborhoods or local society. It can also address the cultural differences or conflicts that may be present within the school community that can be addressed. The school can also promote cultural celebrations through fairs, shows, concerts, and dances which can enhance self-awareness of various cultures within the school community.
Since many students come from culturally and linguistically diverse families, teachers can help in the promotion of parent involvement within the school setting. Some children come from families who are believe it is the teacher’s role to instruct their children and they shouldn’t be actively involved in their education. Compared to American families, many immigrant families don’t see parent involvement as a necessary or universal aspect of their child’s education (Copeland 2007). Many believe it is they should have limited involvement or access to their child’s academics. Other immigrant parents are quite concern about what views and perspectives their children are learning in schools based on cultures and how it can affect their own cultural aspects. For instance, American parents may encourage individual creativity and would love for their child’s teacher to express individuality in the classroom whereas parents from other cultures might find this disrespectful because it demonstrates a lesser authoritative role from the teacher and gives the child a chance to have freedom of thoughts and opinions (Copeland 2007).
Although some parents might feel involvement should be quite limited based on their culture, there are some parents who would like to participate in their child’s education and building a sense of cultural awareness in their school communities. Professor Mubina Hassanali Kirmani states, “Children and families from diverse backgrounds entering an unfamiliar school can feel isolated and may require special attention……if they are welcomed and acknowledged, they can be empowered to reach their full human potential and make positive contributions to the school community” (2007). To help promote a multicultural atmosphere in many schools particularly in elementary schools, there are several ways children and their families can get involved such as families and students can partake in hands-on activities which may be related to the student’s native language. The acceptance and promotion of various cultural languages can expose the students’ to cultural diversity and enriches language experience for all children. Another way to recognize each student and their families with their cultural background is by collaborating family cultural events through traditional games, photographs, music, dances and meanings of children’s name through display walls. Teachers can also have students and their families conduct classroom discussions which may enhance knowledge of another’s culture that bring a clear understanding to certain controversial topics.
Schools that create a nurturing, caring atmosphere for children and their families from diverse backgrounds are playing important roles to children’s learning and knowledge. To help continue building strong cultural awareness with students and their families, teachers must express to them how important learning about each other’s culture can build a positive, safe classroom environment. The teacher must also express to the students and their families how a negative disposition and bias against another culture can hinder the growth process of building a multicultural atmosphere. The teacher should continue to state the classroom goal of building self-awareness and acceptance of various cultures to help enhance one’s knowledge of cultural diversity.
















Works Cited
Copeland, A. (2007). Welcoming International Parents to Your Classroom. Kappa Delta Pi, 66-70
Darling-Hammond, L., Wise, A.E., & Klein, S.P. (1995) A license to teach: Building a profession for the 21st-century schools. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Gollnick, D.M., Chinn, P.C. (2009). Multicultural Education in a Pluralistic Society. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson
Kirmani, M. (2007, November) Empowering Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Children and Families. Young Children 94-98
Risko, V., & Walker-Dalhouse, D. (2007, September) Tapping Students’ Cultural Funds of Knowledge to Address the Achievement Gap. The Reading Teacher, 61, 98-100