Teaching to a diverse range of students with different needs at times can feel overwhelming for any classroom teacher. Students in the United States vary from cultural backgrounds, religion, social statuses and even political views. Globalization involves the transformation of our nation. Such as, the acceptance of other citizens coming to our land, whether it being legally or illegally, and attend our schools. Although some may argue that this is a disgrace to our nation’s reputation, student diversity in the classroom can help our students accept one another, create unity in our environment, and help understand other racial point of views. Diversity in the classroom is a need and is here to stay, teachers must accept this issue we face today, and realize that we all can benefit from this change.
Teaching students from different backgrounds and cultures can alter the way teachers teach and how students learn. When students are faced with these differences in the classroom, students may believe that there are no similarities in their lifestyles. In fact, having students interact with each other can allow learners the opportunity to create meaning through conversation. According to Jerome Bruner in his book Acts of Meaning, learning is stimulated by interactions with others. “Students learn by a restatement in words …or a language systems that is transformed into words.” He believes that learning is a process and that knowledge is learned through a variety of approaches to teaching.
As a teacher, I observed that everyone in the classroom will eventually benefited from the English language learners. I noticed my students expanded on their vocabulary and went in to deeper meanings when talking about writing topics and brainstorming for ideas. They brought different point of views during classroom discussion and helped one another understand their individual values, morals, and tradition. As an educator I have realized that there is much more to explore in order to relate to students who are coming into our nation from other countries. We as teachers are limited in the languages that we speak, uninformed about their religion, and culture. Speaking the Spanish language has been a positive advantage for me in myclassroom. I can understand the students need teachers to translate and communicate with the English language learner. However, there would be a big language barrier between me and a student that comes from India, China, or the Philippians. Given these facts, I believe that teachers would benefit from specific trainings on ways to teach students from different cultures and also learn strategies on what we can do to meet their needs in order to leave no child behind.
I believe that teachers in the U.S. should have access to learning different languages and also have affordable classes for teachers that focus on these needs. As long as our government allows immigrants into our nation, we need to act upon the fast growing realization at hand. Moni Basu’s states that the Asian population alone has increased from “2010, 36% of new immigrants were Asians compared to 31% for Hispanic” where as, “A decade ago when 19% of immigrants were Asian and 59% were Hispanic.” (www.cnn.com.) America is evolving into a fast growing nation and has an increasing large population that is expected to expand and produce more and more each year. There are many expectations from teachers and the need for student success. Just as educators need to keep up with technology, teachers also need up to date information that support what we need in the classroom focusing on foreign students. Teachers need to provide the best education to all students and in doing so; together we will also provide a well rounded nation regardless of cultural backgrounds, religion, social statuses and even political views.
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