Lauren Hughes

2.4 Culture

3.7.7 Determine personal contributions to working with culturally diverse communities and

learners by reflecting on one’s own personal culture.

As a teacher your job is to teach your students the curriculum they will need to know and

use in upcoming years. However, as a good teacher, you have to teach your students more than

just the curriculum. You have to teach them life skills and how to make decisions for themselves

and how to be a respectful and responsible human being. To do this, teachers need to open the

minds of their students and introduce different cultures and backgrounds that may be represented

in the classroom.

In order to give students an idea of how to respect other cultures and share their own,

teachers need to be able to open up about their background and where they come from. As an

example, I created a presentation including where I grew up, my favorite things, my religion and

other basic information that would give my students an opportunity to see and learn about my

culture (evidence 2.4.1). Sharing this information about your life will not only help your kids

understand what culture is, specifically your culture, but it will also allow them to connect with

you on a personal level and start or continue building a deeper rapport. These relationships are so

important to have in a classroom because it makes the students feel cared about and may give

them an adult figure in their life they may be deprived of at home. I also took “could you

survive” quizzes that asked questions related to the lower, middle and upper classes (2.4.2). I

took all three and could only answer questions in the middle class section. This showed me that
students of these classes potentially live very different lives and kids of the lower class have to

deal with way more responsibility or risk than other kids.

Teaching with culture in mind includes breaking the implicit bias that will occur

(evidence 2.4.3). Implicit bias, also known as unconscious bias, is defined as social stereotypes

about certain groups of people that individuals form outside their own conscious awareness. This

means that people make assumptions about someone before getting to know them just because of

how they look or what their background is like. This is especially important for teachers to be

aware of because no student should be treated unfairly or have assumptions made about them

because of factors that cause implicit bias. An example of implicit bias would be racial biases

where black or brown students may be viewed as more dangerous or not as smart as other

students, or biases correlating social status to academic achievement. Just because a student may

not come from a wealthy background does not mean he/she is less capable of learning or

succeeding.

As classrooms continue to become more diverse, it is very important that teachers

incorporate sharing students’ cultures and learning how to respect them. To do this teachers need

to be creative when they introduce this topic to their class and whatever assignment they will be

completing in order to keep the students intrigued and open minded. I created a “respecting

diversity” assignment that I would potentially give to my students in the future (evidence 2.4.4 ).

This assignment included an interview with the child's parents or someone in their culture and

asking questions about where they come from and what their culture is. The interview will be

followed by creating a poster that will be presented to the class along with a class discussion

about the similarities and differences of cultures and lifestyles that may be represented in the

classroom. Attached to the assignment will be a rubric in which all requirements will be listed. In
addition to this, I also explained my philosophy of teaching students of poverty and how I will

make sure they are comfortable and successful in my classroom (evidence 2.4.5). A key factor of

teaching these students is to follow Maslow's Hierarchy which states : teachers need to focus on

the safety and well-being of their students before focusing on the curriculum and academic

achievement of the student.