American classrooms are getting more diversified each year, as more children with diverse cultural and religious backgrounds are enrolling in the schools. Hence, it is high time for educators to embrace the diversity in the classes and foster classroom designs that are inclusive of all diversities so as to ensure the success of all the students (Causey et al., 2000). The diversities in most classrooms are cultural, racial, religious, language, economic, gender-based, and ethnic. For young students who are yet to understand the aspects of diversity, it is difficult for them to understand why other students with backgrounds that are not similar to them behave, act, or speak in a manner that is different to them. The failure to understand the diversities by the young children often leads to diversity conflicts. This essay will describe a case scenario of a diversity conflict in a class of young children, how the conflict was resolved, and how I would resolve the conflict today.
Since I am yet to encounter a classroom conflict related to diversity, I interviewed my friend Paige Alex, who works at an elementary school. Alex had a personal experience with diversity conflict at a class; hence, I felt she was best placed to present the diversity case scenario. According to Alex, the diversity conflict involved one of her American Kid and a child to Hispanic parents who had recently immigrated into the country from Mexico. The American student had started bullying the Hispanic student for filing to mispronouncing the word 'ship.' The Hispanic child had pronounced it as 'sheep,' which amused the American kid. The conflict exploded, and it headed up, including the whole class. The class started making gimmicks to the Hispanic child that related to the mispronunciation. While the conflict appeared to amuse the American kids in the class, the Hispanic child found it difficult to withstand the jeers and emotionally broke down and started crying. The scenario that Alex described to me was a diversity conflict since it is clear that the conflict resulted from intolerance to language diversity. The children did not accommodate the mispronunciation of their fellow students.
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As a response to the conflict, Alex told me that she punished the boy who started the bullying by having him sit in the isolated corner for a whole lesson session. A punishment that she admitted was not the best one. Although the bullying stopped, she believed that it stopped because the students started fearing sitting in the isolated corner rather than because they understood their mistake or became more tolerant to language diversity. Just as Alex admitted during the interview, I also feel that resolving the conflict by punishing the offending boy was not the best way to resolve it. The punishment was not effective because it instilled fear in the offender rather than learning something about being tolerant to diversity. In addition, the solution did not address the victim in any way. Hence, the Hispanic child will always be skeptical of the same conflict happening again and may even become shy and avoid speaking in public for fear of being laughed at if he mispronounces a word.
The conflict, in this case, was a language barrier and diversity conflict. Although the children could benefit from doubt for them failing to understand language diversity as they are young, the behavior should not be tolerated in any class. The resolution to a conflict of this kind should not instill fear, but it should promote diversity tolerance and encourage the victim and make them feel inclusive. As such, if I were to resolve the conflict today, in addition to warning the offending child against his behavior, I would use strategies proposed by Otto (2015), such as helping the Hispanic child overcome the language barriers, creating a buddy system in the class, and creating activities aimed at promoting cultural awareness and diversity.
According to Cheatham and Hart Barnett (2017), helping students overcome language barriers is a long-term solution to the problems of conflicts arising from jeers due to mispronunciations. Hence, in this case, if the Hispanic student is assisted and able to overcome the language barriers by understanding English pronunciations, then it would be a permanent solution to the conflict. Secondly, creating a buddy system involves pairing the English learners with the children who are learners or those who are kind, patient, and willing to help the English learners (Flores & Rosa, 2015). In this case, I would pair the Hispanic child with an American child who would help him become better in English. Finally, diversity-themed class activities help students become more tolerant of other peoples' language, culture, and religions. In this case, the activities would be aimed at educating the children on the existence of numerous languages, making the children understand that speaking other peoples' language is not easy and people are bound to make pronunciation mistakes and that speaking or failing to speak a specific language does not mean that a person is inferior or stupid (Otto, 2015). I believe these solutions would ensure that no such conflict ever happens again in the class.
In conclusion, the essay has described a classroom conflict related to language diversity that involved an American child and a Hispanic child. The conflict involved the American child laughing at the Hispanic child for failing to pronounce the word 'ship' properly. The conflict was solved by punishing the offending child, but the essay has opined that the punishment was not an effective one. It has proposed that in addition to warning the offender, the teacher should have helped the Hispanic child overcome the language barriers, created a buddy system in the class, and created activities to promote cultural awareness and diversity, which would have ensured the conflict never happens again.
References
Alex, Paige. Personal Interview.
Causey, V. E., Thomas, C. D., & Armento, B. J. (2000). Cultural diversity is basically a foreign term to me: The challenges of diversity for preservice teacher education. Teaching and teacher education , 16 (1), 33-45.
Cheatham, G. A., & Hart Barnett, J. E. (2017). Overcoming common misunderstandings about students with disabilities who are English language learners. Intervention in School and Clinic , 53 (1), 58-63.
Flores, N., & Rosa, J. (2015). Undoing appropriateness: Raciolinguistic ideologies and language diversity in education. Harvard Educational Review , 85 (2), 149-171.
Otto, B. (2015). Literacy development in early childhood: Reflective teaching for birth to age eight . Waveland Press.
