Diversity in the classroom often leads to many challenges for most learners. Educators today are tasked with ensuring that the classrooms are culturally appropriate for students. A teacher should be able to provide or choose an approach that can help a learner fit in an environment. Notably, ensuring culture in the classroom is not just about language, sharing recipes, religious ceremonies. Culture is about creating a unique environment for each learner ( Achinstein & Aguirre, 2008) . Teachers need to engage the learners in manners that are culturally and linguistic appropriate and avoid having cultural stereotypes in the classroom. Teachers face various challenges when incorporating culture into a classroom.
Stereotyping in classrooms with children from various cultures is common. Therefore, teachers must understand their students well and know their different academic abilities ( Culture in the Classroom . 2018). When the teacher understands each student individually, the issue of stereotypes based on the learner’s background will be avoided. Stereotyping students based on their culture can have negative impacts on the teacher, as he or she will always have some level of bias towards the learner.
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Another challenge that may arise is finding a culturally relevant curriculum. A curriculum is important for the education process. However, a curriculum should accommodate people from various cultures. Most curriculums are not designed to accommodate various cultures, which is unfair for most children, especially the minority ( Culture in the Classroom . 2018) . Therefore, a teacher should try as much as possible to make each student comfortable by choosing the most culturally relevant books ( Cartledge et.al. 2015) .
Honoring students’ experiences can be challenging, especially if the teacher does not understand each learner’s background ( Culture in the Classroom . 2018) . Teachers should provide the learners with an environment that will make them feel loved and respected. For teachers to create such an environment, they need to understand the learners’ backgrounds, strengths, conflicts, and challenges ( 10 Effective DAP Teaching Strategies | NAEYC . 2018). These measures will help against creating biases in the classroom.
The conflict theory argues that education promotes social inequality through its standardized testing and the hidden curriculum. Notably, schools are different in the way they are funded and in how they conduct their learning as well as the learning conditions ( Burde et .al. 2017). Due to such differences, schools are bound to contribute highly to disparities and enhance social inequality. Social inequality enhances the challenges of stereotyping in schools, having a curriculum that only one community seems to understand and relate as well as categorizing students based on their backgrounds.
Categorizing of students is also enhanced by the use of school tracks, whereby the school will track their students starting from grade schools and place them according to their fast or slow learning ( Luk & Lin, 2017) . Although tracking is advantageous in helping the slow students catch up with the fast learners, it may lead to social inequality. Student’s race, social class, and ethnicity may affect the track in which they are placed even though the schools may use education to place the students in their tracks. Notably, students of color are often categorized in the lower tracks while the white students are categorized in the fast learners’ tracks ( Goldstein, 2012) . Consequently, the students of color begin to have low self-esteem and think that they have little academic ability.
Additionally, the social inequality in the school may be enhanced by the standardized tests. Conflict theorists argue that the school standardized tests are culturally biased. The standardized tests contain questions that have answers that are more likely to be known by white and the middle-class learners. The questions are skewed in such a way that the experiences of the white and the middle-class learners help the answer the questions easily. Conflict theorists also argue that schools have a hidden curriculum that has values and beliefs that are skewed to the rich and not the poor. With such the students from lower social backgrounds may feel uncomfortable and unaccepted in the classroom. Stereotypes such as some students from certain communities have less intellectual capacity than other may arise, rendering the class environment unsuitable for every learner.
Teachers need to address the challenges brought about by culture to help the learners develop cognitively and academically. Therefore, the teacher should purpose to support the learners as a whole by taking care of their physical, emotional and social strengths and weaknesses ( 10 Effective DAP Teaching Strategies | NAEYC . 2018) . The teacher should work towards balancing the classroom environment to fit the needs of each learner. For instance, de-tracking of students may help reduce the stereotypes that one community or race is more intellectually able than the other.
Therefore, the teacher will devise ways that will ensure that the fast and slow learners are catered for in the classroom. By integrating the high and low achievers, the teacher indicates that no race or community is superior to the other. Moreover, the teacher may encourage all students to help one another through peer learning, which will enhance the cohesion and social equality ( 10 Effective DAP Teaching Strategies | NAEYC . 2018) . Additionally, it is imperative that the teacher makes it known to the student that he or she understand that the students come from different cultures. However, such knowledge should be used as an appreciative tool for various cultures and help the students embrace and respect one another.
In conclusion, culture in the classroom can be quite challenging for the teachers. However, teachers should come up with ways to deal with such challenges and use such knowledge to help the students understand and respect one another. The teacher should also make sure that the classroom is culturally appropriate and accommodating to each student. This enhances the feeling of belonging to the learners, which will lead to academic success.
References
10 Effective DAP Teaching Strategies NAEYC . (2018). Naeyc.org . Retrieved 20 February 2018, from https://www.naeyc.org/resources/topics/dap/10-effective-dap-teaching-strategies
Achinstein, B., & Aguirre, J. (2008). Cultural Match or Culturally Suspect: How New Teachers of Color Negotiate Sociocultural Challenges in the Classroom. Teachers College Record , 110 (8), 1505-1540.
Burde, D., Kapit, A., Wahl, R. L., Guven, O., & Skarpeteig, M. I. (2017). Education in emergencies: A review of theory and research. Review of Educational Research , 87 (3), 619-658.
Cartledge, G. W. E. N. D. O. L. Y. N., Lo, Y. Y., Vincent, C. G., & Robinson-Ervin, P. O. R. S. H. A. (2015). Culturally responsive classroom management. Handbook of classroom management , 411-430.
Culture in the Classroom . (2018). Teaching Tolerance . Retrieved 20 February 2018, from https://www.tolerance.org/culture-classroom
Goldstein, D. (2012). An Interview with Lisa Delpit on Educating 'Other People's Children' The Nation . Retrieved 20 February 2018, from https://www.thenation.com/article/interview-lisa-delpit-educating-other-peoples-children/
Luk, J. C., & Lin, A. M. (2017). Classroom interactions as cross-cultural encounters: Native speakers in EFL lessons . Routledge.
