The Diversity Proficiency Self-Evaluation disclosed several areas that I need to improve upon when it comes to ensuring that the needs and backgrounds of all students are met. There were several areas that I felt I was relatively strong in with the way I have been able to integrate diversity in my classes. I have always been a technology teacher. My current role as a technology coordinator in an international school in Shanghai sees me working with diverse learners coming from over 35 different countries. This has assisted my development of diversity proficiency skills as they have allowed me to work with, learn and educate a wide range of students, including gifted students, students with learning disabilities, students with behavioral issues, English as a Second Language students, and students from a wide range of cultural backgrounds. Throughout this course, I aspire to increase my knowledge of diversity proficiency to ensure that I am able to better meet the needs of all my students.
Of all the diversity proficiencies addressed on the self-evaluation, according to me, the most important is ‘I create a learning community in which individual differences are respected’. This is always an important goal that I had for my classroom and that I currently strive to create. All students should feel safe and respected within a learning environment. An example of the most effective ways I have been able to create this feeling was when we collaborated and worked together using Minecraft. My year 5 students were tasked with building an ancient Greek city for their unit on Ancient Greece and through their collaborative efforts the whole class was successful. Our school is a bilingual school and sometimes we get students for whom English nor Chinese is a first language. Some of these students had never spoken outside of the classroom, but were able to build relationships, trust, and respect through the completion of their minecraft world. Going through the resources, I found a link to a very nice website on Teaching tolerance. I found this very useful as some of our classes have students who would really benefit from this as I came across a lot of ideas to use to not only build tolerance, and to encourage positive interaction among students. One of the suggestions was participation in National Mix It Up at Lunch Day. This event asks students to move away from their normal lunch routine and find someone new to connect with by sitting at a different table or inviting a new student to join in a conversation over lunch thereby helping to reduce biases and bringing together students from a variety of cultures (Southern Poverty Law Center, 2016).
Another one of the diversity proficiencies that I feel I have a strong grasp of is ‘I am aware of the needs and issues related to English language learners and am familiar with strategies to support their learning’. International schools in Shanghai are very unique in that we get a lot of students for whom English or Chinese isn’t their first language. Our school has a very strong bilingual program where each class in Primary have 2 co-teachers, a western teacher and a Chinese teacher, this enables students to pick up both English and Chinese. We have a very strong EAL (English as an additional language) department to support students whose first language isn’t English, these children are pulled out of their classes during English and work with their EAL teacher. Depending on their progress they can join mainstream class once they have achieved the required level. As such our school invests a lot of time and effort in training all staff to work with these students and we have regular training which gives us strategies to work with. As a specialist teacher, I always have the support of a Chinese co-teacher to help support with students who speak Chinese. I understand and can facilitate instruction that helps use students’ strengths as the basis for growth. Being a technology teacher I tend to use our devices to help these students be proactive and help themselves to learn by giving them simple tools like translators on their devices. Another peculiarity of the expat community is that we have a huge transient population. We have students joining at different times of the year coming from different parts of the world therefore sometimes I find that the students have gaps in their technology knowledge and I need to bring them up to the class expectations especially for ongoing applications like our blogging platform which is used for creating our digital portfolios. We have student led conferences which are held in April showcasing students learning through these digital portfolios. In order to prepare the students I also pull out students and work with them separately, sometimes with the support of the Chinese co-teacher. I have had instances where I have had to involve parents to support their child at home. As the RWRCOEL Diversity Proficiencies states ‘Understanding the learner – the candidate demonstrates awareness of students prior learning, culture, family and community values to improve teaching and learning’. It is so important in my school setting to understand the students background, prior learning, their culture and the culture that they are coming from because a lot of our students are TCKs – third culture kids. According to Ruth Van Reken “A third culture kids is a person who has spent a significant part of his or her developmental years outside their parents culture. The third culture kid builds relationships to all the cultures, while not having full ownership in any. Although elements form each culture are assimilated into third cultures kid’s life experience, the sense of belonging is in relationship to others of the same background, other TCKs.” Therefore, while working with these students it is imperative for me to not only look to incorporate multiculturalism but also the culture of these TCKs.
Dr. Sonia Nieto discussed seven characteristics of multicultural education in this week’s learning resources video. The characteristic that most aligns with my diversity is #5: Outreach to Families (Laureate Education, 2015). A good way to understand the culture, community, and background of individual students is to build a relationship with families (Laureate Education, 2015). At our school we do a lot not only for the students but also for their families. It is a huge culture shock to come from a different country or continent to China and it is very important that the families are made to feel welcome, we have a very warm and caring community feel to our school with a very active parent body that does a lot of settling in activities like trips to the local markets, hospital tours etc since language is a big issue here. Most of the locals speak only Chinese & Shanghainese so it is really difficult for new families. Dr. Nieto encourages educators to consider the language that is used when communicating with parents (Laureate Education, 2015). Our school communicates to the parents through our school blogs set up for year levels with academic information and another for school information. All our blogs are bilingual in English and in Chinese. We also hold a lot of workshops for parents on a wide range of topics such as academics, technology, parenting, bullying etc. all these are bilingual.True multicultural education moves beyond the classroom walls and encompasses every factor that influences students, including their family and home life. Being the technology coordinator, I am involved with setting up and maintaining all the platforms therefore it is imperative for me to understand all the issues related to diversity and multiculturalism. I look forward to learning to include all aspects of the diversity proficiencies through this course in my teaching and administrations duties.
An area of weakness for me is having a comprehensive understanding of exceptionality in learning. I hope that with this course I will be able to improve upon this area. I feel that this area is really important for me to develop a good understanding of as I truly believe that intervention with technology at the right time can really help my students and I want to build my toolkit with skills to benefit my learning community.
References:
Laureate Education (Producer). (2015). Introduction to multicultural education [Video file]. Baltimore, MD: Author
Southern Poverty Law Center (2016). Teaching tolerance. Retrieved from https://www.splcenter.org/teaching-tolerance
Ruth Van Reken, Third Culture Kids retrieved from http://www.tckworld.com
Amita's Musings 