Creating A Diverse Classroom

One of the most important aspects of life that we need to teach children is that everyone is different in their own way but that makes us special. Diversity can be a tough topic to deal with especially in schools, not because it's tough to teach but because when dealing with public schools there are many different beliefs by some people. In my classroom I want everyone to know that they are welcome and as a class we will welcome each student and where they are from with respect and we will put in the effort to learn about their own culture.

One approach to creating a diverse classroom that I liked Human Relations Appraoches. I liked these because learning from another student can sometimes be easier and sometimes the kids are more willing to listen to each other rather than an adult. One idea that I had was to put the children into diverse groups and have each group do research on a particular culture. That way they are working together in their diverse groups and also learning about another culture at the same time. We would then have all of the groups present to the rest of the class so they would all get to learn about the other cultures.

I think that as new teachers we need to work hard at making these children have a better chance of accepting diversity when they are older. I think it is easier to teach the children when they are younger rather than trying to chance their views when they are older.

I choose the Human Relations Approaches from the McNergeny book, Chapter 3, Page 53.