- How can we transform cultural diversity into valuable resources at home?
When I hear the term “cultural diversity”, beautiful pictures come to my mind: cooperation, solidarity, richness, knowledge, interesting, different, languages, happiness, help and so on.
I've never seen inmigration as a problem in a classroom. In fact, I've had the chance to do my teaching practice in two completely different schools. The first school was situated in a gueto where 95% of my students were from Morocco and Latinoamerica. My second experience was in a school in the center of my city where most of the children were catalan and their enjoy a high economical situation. Everybody though that in my second practices I will be more comfortable cause people believe that in a multicultural classroom is more difficult to deal with the different levels and children's behaviour (These ideas are a sample of the awful sthereotypes).
But I have to say that obviously I spent fantastic weeks teaching in the first school. It was one of the best experience I've ever had. I could learn more than in the second primary school. That is why I'm a really open-minded person. I consider it's an essential characteristic. We as future teachers should be aware of the multiculturality. All our life, actions, wealth are mixed by different cultures. As a consequence, we must present a friendly attitude when diversity comes in to the classroom.
From my point of view, cultural diversity means reality!!
The Educational System has to give up selecting schools. We can't choose who is suitable for a classroom and as a result building schools for foreigner people, natives...
It's extremely sad that schools characterized by being “catalan”, for example. They don't get advantages of the richness diversity. I really hope that one day it will be changed...
I also would like to comment the Globalization lesson. I'm pretty happy because we have done several exercices in order to take the most of the cultural diversity. The teacher has provided us many useful activities.
The first point to mention is the mixed groups. It's important to work in groups but more enriching if the members of it are from different countries. So, we talked about a comic which one monkey was totally physically different from the other three animals. We chose the sentence: “Look at him! He is very different...” Children always point the differences as negatives so we as teachers have to change that idea.
One of the exercices we can do in order to avoid that negativism is stand up in a line and the teacher ask some questions. If your answer is positive you step forward on the contrary you step backwards. It shows that the diversity always exists.
- Cultural diversity as a meaningful tool for the teaching-learning process (activities we can do in class)
-Children can make a van made of paper and write in each slide one positive characteristic of the classmates. It's a good exercice to grow up the self-confidence and solve problems between children. That activitivy could be done orally but for the shy students it's easier writing than speaking out loud.
-Cooking recipes book. Children can explain their own recipes and share to the rest of the class. They also can take the book to get help from their parents. They can stick pictures, comments, etc.
-Have breakfast together. Children and the teacher can arrange a “cultural breakfast”. Each child brings a typical breakfast from his country. So, everybody can enjoy the meal.
CLASSROOM POSTER OF DIVERSITY:
