Education of Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Students, Essay Example

Introduction

Since the beginning of the 20^th century with psychologists such as Maslow and Piaget it has been recognized that self-esteem is essential for successful human development. Much of that self-confidence is achieved at school, because the amount of time that children and youth spend in this setting as well as the information learned with peers.  When students feel good about themselves, they are much more likely to do well in their academic studies; and, the better students do in their studies, the better they feel about themselves. Thus, fostering the students’ confidence and providing positive feedback are essential tools for teachers.

Describe the group characteristics (number and types of students, grade level, course description, etc.) of the observed classroom.

The “Culture and Esteem” video shows two classroom settings with elementary school children working on joint projects followed by interviews with teachers talking about the importance of building self-esteem.  Both video cuts show older elementary school-aged children, but the settings are different. In the first setting, the children’s classroomseats arearranged in a traditional mode, with the teacher in the front of the room, and the children in rows facing the front of the class. The teacher has given colored paper to one of the students to pass out to the students for the project. In the second setting, the children are working together in small groups on the floor with their project, and communication is enhanced just by the fact that they are not sitting in their desks and communicating with each other versus listening to and watching the teacher. These children also look more involved and interested in the project than the first group.

Describe the tone of the observed teacher’s interactions with students.

The video showing the classroom settings are very short, so it is difficult to know how the teacher and students interact. The teacher is not present in the second classroom visual. However, the interviews with the teachers provide greater information. Both teachers, one talking about cultural self-esteem and the other about self-confidence and academics, stress the importance of building self-identity in the classroom and how that can lead to long-term positive results with the children.  The teacher who discusses the value of cross-cultural learning emphasizes that when talking about American schools it is important for children to feel good about who they are as unique individuals. Classrooms need to encourage two-way conversation where both the students and the teacher learn about each other. The teacher who speaks on academics reinforces the idea that people will be more motivated to continue to learn and study about topics in which they are successful; on the contrary, they will shy away from those subjects that they are fearful of or in which they have not done well. These feelings are not only while they are going to school, but what takes place in school sets the standards for the rest of their life.

Explain how the observed teacher builds the confidence of students with diverse backgrounds.
The teachers discuss how to make children feel more comfortable and confident, even when they are different some way. For example, children who have a disability also run the risk of low self-esteem, especially when the other students do not understand their condition or even are fearful of it. Students often find it difficult to ask the student or the teacher about the disability. The curriculum for a diverse classroom with special needs children should thus acknowledge differences as well as shared abilities and similarities. Children need to recognize that every person has strengths and challenges, no matter who they are. Teachers need to develop activities that provide ways for both disabled and nondisabled children to relate with and learn from one other. The teacher can also provide ways that disabled children, as well as the nondisabled, can expand their abilities, for example, moving a student’s wheelchair to the beat of music or on a basketball court. Such activities help oppose misconceptions, misunderstandings and stereotyping about what disabled students are and are not capable of doing.

 Describe the level of student engagement with the observed lesson.

The children are working together in groups. Research shows both social and academic success for at-risk, ethnic-minority, and language-minority students occurs in cooperative learning groups with children of diverse background and experiences (Benard, 1995). In a multi-ethnic classroom, it is advantageous to have an inclusive curriculum that focuses on the students’ strengths but, at the same time,meets the personal academic and social needs of each child, including those who have disabilities or developmental delays, are at-risk,come from various minority groups and cultures, and/or have limited English language skills.

Cooperative learning can be a very productive manner of teaching in contrast to the traditional lecture style approach. The video clip shows that the children are engaged and working together.  Studies have shown that the best results come from classrooms that use a mixture of the traditional and alternative learning styles. Slavin (1995), for example, found that student achievement is positively impacted when it is tied to both group goals and individual roles and responsibility. Team members are motivated with incentives to help one another with the class project. This also enhances the relations among different ethnic groups, because students with diverse backgrounds and experiences come together in a respectful and cooperative manner to work on similar goals and objectives. To the contrary, the traditional approach places an emphasis on competition and sets one student against another to achieve academic success.

Connect one pedagogical strategy observed in the lesson to building the confidence of students with diverse backgrounds

It is important that a teacher does not throw in activities that promote diversity just for the sake of it; they need to have some context and relate to other curriculum (Garcia, 1991).  To provide a meaningful instructional structure, the curriculum for a diverse classroom needs to be  based on thematic units and purposeful topics that include all children and reflect their personal experiences. Garcia summarizes the results of research on effective educational practices for linguistically and culturally diverse children as: 1) The more linguistically and culturally varied the children taught, the more closely teachers must relate academic content to the students’ own environment and experiences; 2) the more diverse the classroom, the more integrated the curriculum should be; 3) the greater the diversity of the students, the greater the need for active rather than passive endeavors; and 4) the more diverse the children, the more essential is to provide them with alternatives to apply their learning in a meaningful context.

Assess the effectiveness of the strategies the observed teacher used to build the confidence of students with diverse backgrounds.

What both teachers express about building self-confidence and self-esteem can work well when the teacher shows that he/she cares and is interacts with the students. Both of these teachers recognize that it is important for each child to feel special both personally and academically. They recognized that self-esteem can also be furthered when the curriculum promotes the language spoken in the home as well as English. Yet, those students who are learning English as a second language need to interact as much as possiblewith their English-speaking peers.Studies find that children readily acquire a second language when they take part in meaningful activities requiring the useof the second language (McLaughlin, 1995). Therefore, the teacher must develop a curriculum that motivates the students to speak, read, and write the second language in productive ways.

The teachers recognize that children who have a disability also run the risk of low self-esteem, especially when the other students do not understand their condition or even are fearful of it. Students often find it difficult to ask the student or the teacher about the disability. The curriculum for a diverse classroom with special needs children should thus acknowledge differences as well as shared abilities and similarities. Children need to recognize that every person has strengths and challenges, no matter who they are.Teachers need to develop activities that provide ways for both disabled and nondisabled children to relate with and learn from one other. The teacher can also provide ways that disabled children, as well as the nondisabled, can expand their abilities, for example, moving a student’s wheelchair to the beat of music or on a basketball court. Such activities help oppose misconceptions, misunderstandings and stereotyping about what disabled students are and are not capable of doing.

Explain the thinking process you went through to complete this evaluation

After I watched the video, I gave thought to what classrooms are like when there are homogeneous student groups versus classrooms that are more diverse. In both, it is important to make the children feel good about themselves, but this will be done in different ways depending on the class makeup. I then thought about the classes I’ve seen that are diverse and how the best teachers plan special activities and curricula that make the students feel good about themselves.
Diversity makes the classroom much more interesting and exciting for the students and the teacher.  Teachers need to support and respect the uniqueness of each student by offering variety and choice in the classrooms. Not only does thisanswer the varied needs of the students, but it
will also encourage them to become independent thinkers and learners too.

References

Garcia, E. (1991). Education of linguistically and culturally diverse students: Effective instructional practices Santa Cruz, CA: National Center for Research on Cultural Diversity and Second Language Learning.

Maslow, A. Motivation and personality. New York: Harper and Row

McLaughlin, B. (1992). Myths and misconceptions about second language learning. ERIC Digest [Online]. Website retrieved October 22, 2010

Piaget, J. (1953) The Origins of Intelligence in Children. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. http://www.eric.ed.gov/contentdelivery/servlet/ERICServlet?accno=ED350885

Slavin, R. E. (2006). Educational psychology: Theory and practice. Boston: Pearson Education.