Professional Documents
Culture Documents
EDU 371
Herzog
Article Review #2
8/4/14
Abigail Pelletier
EDU 371
Herzog
Article Review #2
8/4/14
approachable and fun way for students to be aware of the expectations for acceptance in
the classroom.
One of the former discussion posts of mine helps to identify my personal feelings
on the issue at hand when I said that because Maine is considered to be one of the most
homogeneous US states, we should try extra hard to ensure that elementary schools
promote cultural diversity. I think that it is extremely important to create an inclusive
and tolerant classroom, where all students and cultures are accepted equally. As teachers,
we should aim to always be sensitive to other cultures and include pictures of students
from different backgrounds in displays, instruction, etc. We can also help to promote
diversity by teaching our students about different cultures.
Also, I personally think that there are a lot of teachers who are unaware of how
they should include this piece into instruction. I say this because after taking an
education course this spring and doing observations and interviews, I found that teachers
in the lower grades especially did not really know or recognize how they could include
multiculturalism in the classroom. I think that books can be a great tool to teach about
other cultures and people around the world. Students should know that the expectation is
for them to be respectful of each other's differences and you can do this by creating an
environment that supports all students and learns about others.
I also know that the CCSS (particularly for third grade) includes teaching about
folktales, folklore and fables and this can be a great way to incorporate this into the
classroom. Also, students can learn more about different cultures through history
units. One teacher I work with did a "Christmas around the World" unit with her third
grade class that taught about how people around the world celebrate Christmas. She had
her students do a musical play on this and they reached out to the community by inviting
everyone to come watch the performance.
This article really helped me to understand that if we approach multiculturalism in
a more complex and deliberate way, we will help to teach this topic correctly. Also,
teacher preparation programs need to address these issues so students can start out there
careers aware of the need for teaching multiculturalism appropriately and becoming more
culturally aware. Including more culturally responsive instruction for all subjects,
including social studies should be at the forefront of teacher preparation programs and
courses. I personally believe that there should be more of an emphasis on creating
cultural diversity and awareness in the classroom throughout the curriculum and
instructional process. Through careful planning, as a future teacher, I will aim to
incorporate multiculturalism in a variety of ways in order to create unity in the classroom.
References
Castro, A. J., Field, S. L., Bauml, M., & Morowski, D. (2012). I Want a Multicultural
Classroom: Preparing Social Studies Teachers for Culturally Diverse Classrooms. Social
Studies, 103(3), 97-106. doi:10.1080/00377996.2011.575419