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As a teacher, it is important to know and understand the racial and cultural identities of both yourself, and your students. Knowing about your students’ backgrounds is a great way to make the classroom a safe and welcoming environment. Not all educational settings emit a feeling of safety to its students, and that needs to be changed. In this paper, I will discuss how my racial and cultural identity may be the same and may differ from my students, as well as some ways in which the institution of education can be changed to be more racially and culturally inclusive.

Teaching in racially diverse classrooms often leaves educators feeling uncertain about how to proceed and how to respond to historically marginalized students. There is pressure to acknowledge and accept students of color with different perspectives, to diversify the syllabi, be more aware of classroom dynamics, and pay attention to how students of color experience the learning process.

This course included lessons in both written and oral communication to increase the understanding of student diversity. I participated in discussions on the issues of diversity that affect student learning from diverse groups. With the use of Ruby Payne’s book, A Framework for Understanding Poverty and The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, I examined and reflected on the ethnic and economic diversity in schools and students.

During my third year in college, I participated in the Civil Rights and Social Justice Pilgrimage that the ministry department made each year. While on this trip, I was exposed to the good that came off the Civil Rights Movement, but I also witnessed the horrors that so many people endured. One of the events that really troubled was school segregation. One exhibit allowed me to view what a White classroom would look like compared to an African-American classroom. There were extreme differences in these classrooms. As someone who has a passion for teaching and helping children, this deeply upset me that the color of a child’s skin effected their education. At that point, I realized that if I was to become a teacher I would make my classroom

At Barry I met students of various races and cultural backgrounds. The diversity of students generated interesting dialogues, which lead to healthy debates during class discussions and group assignments. I learned to look at life from various perspectives, and gained a new understanding of people in general. My most profound discovery was, once I understood the culture of the person, I developed a better understanding of the person’s thoughts, views, and opinions. Although, we are all different in many ways, our difference does not make us any less deficient. In essence, we can agree that we disagree on certain issues and continue to be respectful of one another.

It is imperative to understand that while positive interactions with diversity can create positive outcomes, recent research demonstrates how negative interactions with diversity can cause harmful effects (Denson & Bowman, 2013). Therefore it is prudent to create quality interactions among diverse students in order for them to reap the benefits of these interactions (Denson & Bowman, 2013). The need for quality interaction is one way in which student affairs professionals can encourage growth in handling different backgrounds of people. Providing students with different experiences than what they are accustomed to opens the students up to positive interactions with their peers (Denson & Bowman, 2013). It is necessary to encourage every student to participate in experiences related to diversity; students

“First of all, it's important that I understand, value, and respect students from all diverse populations. I do this by studying an individual's family values, beliefs, etc. so that I may maintain a good relationship with not only the students, but parents as well. Furthering education and attending conferences to gain knowledge of diversity is crucial to meeting all student

My findings can be useful to implement new social policies to create a more diverse educational classroom setting. In the beginning of the year, school administration may not focus on the racial diversity in a classroom when choosing classes, but I believe this should also be another factor when dividing students, to create an equal diverse classroom. While creating diverse classrooms will aid in the ethnic knowledge of children, organizing school-wide ethnic cultural celebrations can also help expand and introduce different cultures and ethnicities to children who may not otherwise be introduced to a different ethnicity and race, other than the ones they are surrounded with. In relation to personal experience, I grew up in a social setting where my ethnicity was the majority, but when I started college at Dominican University, I was sectored as a minority since most students were white, but I was not affected by this cultural shock as I had a close connection to my ethnic roots and did not let the change of environment affect me. Growing up in an environment where you are the majority, but then radically being introduced to an environment where you become the minority can easily affect the cognitive state of a person, if that person was not well-prepared

However, there are questions as to whether or not teachers possess biases that would influence their teaching methods and curriculum. Taking a class in educational diversity is only a start in addressing those biases that may have been unconsciously created. It is the writer’s sincere hope that researching and writing a paper on multicultural education will be a stepping stone toward the critical examination of biases and practices in regards to diversity in the classroom that will continue to influence the readers throughout their educational

Cultural diversity covers an array of areas. Culture in itself is, “that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, arts, morals, laws, customs, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by a human as a member of society,” (UNESCO, n.d.). Different senses of culture are in multitude when one takes a look at society as a whole. No two types of individuals, from different cultural backgrounds, are the same on many different levels of living much less in – school learning. This area of importance begins in the classroom. For our students, cultural diversity is seen through the lens of society, which is not always clear. As the teacher, an individual has to create a socially accepted environment for each and every student that walks through his or her door on a daily basis. In doing so, as a part of a lesson we will select groups and research key

Since I started this class, I have a learned a great deal about cultural diversity in the classroom and abroad. My perspective has changed slightly but my knowledge of this subject has improved. In my family, my father taught me about the civil rights movement and the evils of segregation in the U.S. My parents taught me to be tolerant of all humans, no matter what they look like, how they dress, or their sexual orientation. My family has always been liberal thinkers who taught me the dark history of racism and bigotry in this country. As an educator I would be accepting to all race, creeds, and religious peoples.

In these days, we are witnessing many of the ethnic diversity in all areas, including education. Ethnic diversity has become an important issue that must be considered carefully and find out its positive and negative aspects. Ethnic diversity is a wonderful thing because it allows people to get to know each other, and share cultural aspects. Additionally, it reduces the chances of developing bias, racism. As we know, many different cultures absolutely have positive and negative effects. Therefore, we must admit that learning to respect and appreciate each other 's cultural and stylistic differences and becoming aware of unconscious assumptions and behaviors that may influence our interactions will enable us to minimize the challenges and derive maximum benefits from diversity. Diversity experiences can promote students’ learning and affect on critical thinking skill that is one of the most important goals of education (McMillan, 1987). One of the richest things for enhancing student learning in the classroom is the diversity of students themselves (Lynn,1998). So how does diversity effect on students, teachers and parent?

Once students and teachers are aware of cultural differences, they become aware of racism and can fight to eradiate it. Through their unbiased understanding of the differences between cultures and races, they are able to come to a point of acceptance of themselves and others. If you noticed in my previous paragraph, I mentioned the different types of diversity. Diversity emphasizes how different students and teachers are, but when explored in a classroom, can be used to reveal our similarities. Once students and teachers grasp the concept of diversity, displayed through everyday interactions with diverse groups of students and teachers, racism begins to disappear. In addition, positive sense of self can be developed once students and teachers have an understanding of their own uniqueness through experiences and understanding of diversity. Once teachers and students

Just like I, my mentees were now part of a diverse community, diverse in a variety of different ways -- race, wealth, sexual orientation, and gender identity. We were not living in a city with population of 90% hispanic. Instead we were living on campus at the University of California, Irvine. We were not familiar with living in a diverse environment and we had not faced discrimination before. I did not want them to feel naïve towards the current situation they were in; I did not want them to feel as if it was properly okay if their peers indirectly discriminated against them. Instead I desired my mentees to be intrinsically motivated to learn about social equity issues that were occurring today: interpersonal microagression, cultural appropriation, social change, and etc. All these issues still existed in the 21st century, and it was their right to become knowledgeable on it.

As years pass the style in which educators teach their students has shifted. However, there has been a consistent universal theme which has defied the test of time that topics society finds difficult or controversial are not to be taught or discussed in a classroom setting. Despite the positive impact the understanding of modern issues facing society could have on many students lives. Being in the position of an educator allows the opportunity to help influence young minds in the direction of creating a more accepting and understanding society. By acquiring new knowledge about race, class, gender and disability it will allow me to become a more open minded teacher emphasizing inclusion, equality and change through classroom discussion.