Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Diversity Statement
Diversity Statement
Diversity Statement
The students that walk into our classrooms are as unique as their own fingerprints.
While many classrooms and curricula are aimed at the perception that there is an “average
student,” cognitive neuroscience argues that there is no such thing (National Center on Universal
Design for Learning. (2010). Students grow up in different socioeconomic households, with
different cultures, disciplinary backgrounds, races and genders, opinions and perspectives
(Caleb, 2014). Students will receive and process information differently not just because of
My first diversity essay explored how people are essentially the same; we all have daily
struggles, fears, emotions, needs, and this serves to build a compassion and empathy among us.
At that time, however, I had not yet acknowledged the importance of looking at the individual,
and what makes them unique. Colorblindness does not serve to honor the different cultures
among us, and all the wonderful things that diversity can contribute to our lives.
“Simply adding social diversity to a group makes people believe that differences of
perspective might exist among them and that belief makes people change their behavior” says
Caleb (2014). When we only see a few points of view we are unable to open our minds and
really explore a topic; when exposed to new opinions and ideas we can grow as humans in our
understanding of one another. Research has supported the idea that diversity enhances creativity,
leads to better decision-making and problem-solving, increases performance and growth, and
The problem is that the materials teachers are provided do not acknowledge the diversity
among our students; for example, despite the plethora of tribes and lifestyles, most material
written about Native Americans are not tribe-specific (Reese, 1999). This can make students
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who are categorized as non-white students feel exclusion, lack of support from peers and
teachers, lack of access, and results in the fact that ethnic minority students have a lower
completion rate for academic goals than their peers; this is also referred to as the “achievement
gap” (Hongtao Y., Sangha R. R., Mai K.V., Aquino G.T., 2018). Cultural disassociation can
affect everyone; most white students enter into college “without an understanding of their own
racial identity or how they fit into a racial hierarchy in the U.S.” (Scheid & Vasko, 2014).
Creating a multicultural classroom is a way that I can solve some of the achievement gap
problems among my students. By opening up the dialogue about different cultures and traditions
we invite students to open up about their own experiences and cultures. In this unit on the
Iditarod, a uniquely Alaskan experience, the students explore the way Alaskan history and
culture affects us today, and honor the traditional Alaskan ways of living. The unit also provides
differentiation for students who may have different learning needs. The differentiated tasks aim
to achieve the same academic goal, whether it be describing the route the mushers take in an
essay, making a poster, or an online graphic presentation. Not all students are given the various
choices; differentiation works best when the students are strongly guided to tasks that strongly
match their abilities to apply their learning (Hocket, 2015). As teachers we should not adjust
students to the curriculum, but instead adjust it to needs of students (MSDE, 2011). For example,
when making a Mother’s Day card with my second grade students, I downloaded a printable with
fill-in blanks, and while some of my students re-wrote the sentences by hand, a few others were
challenges before me. “Demographic changes have made it increasingly likely that a teacher's
experiences don't mirror those of her students” (Quinton, 2013), and since many teachers, when
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explaining something tend to use examples from their own experiences, they are unable to relate
to the many of their students. My goal in every classroom is to acknowledge the various cultural
backgrounds, honor their beliefs with a non-judgmental, exploratory curricula, and welcome the
diversity of all students into my classroom by bringing them and their experiences into class
discussions.
References
differentiation/
Hongtao Y., Sangha R. R., Mai K.V., Aquino G.T. (2018). Supplemental Instruction: Helping
http://search.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.uas.alaska.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eft&AN
=130539926&login.asp&site=ehost-live
MSDE Center for Technology in Education, Division of Special Education / Early Intervention
Services (2011). Universal Design for Learning (UDL) [online video] Retrieved 5/26/19
from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaSZqgr2eUM
National Center on Universal Design for Learning. (2010). UDL: Principles and Practice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGLTJw0GSxk
Quinton, S. (2013). Good Teachers Embrace Their Students’ Cultural Backgrounds. The
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teachers-embrace-culture/430356/
Reese, Debbie. “Authenticity and Sensitivity: Goals for writing and reviewing books with Native
http://www.slj.com/1999/12/collection-development/authenticity-and-sensitivity-goals-
for-writing-and-reviewing-books-with-native-american-themes/#_
Scheid, A. F., & Vasko, E. T. (2014). Teaching Race: Pedagogical Challenges in Predominantly
White Undergraduate Theology Classrooms. Teaching Theology & Religion, 17(1), 27-
45. doi:10.1111/teth.12157