Multicultural Background
Working with multicultural diversity at a college level could be a real challenge for facilitators and administrators. People coming from different cultural backgrounds carry on different educational experiences and sometimes hold "non traditional" expectations of educative processes. We have to deal with cultural accomodations, language accomodations and translate those into an effective educative planning. Those accomodations may involve all parts of college support systems, admissions, academic counseling, registrars and facilitators.
Hi Lorna,
Thank you for your comments about being aware of different cultural backgrounds of students. The diversity of students today requires that instructors have a working knowledge of the types of supports and needs that their students have. The "human aspects" of teaching really enter in here.
Gary
Cultural diversity can also be a problem because students tend to group with others of their same ethnic background and not enable themselvs to associate with outers.
Hi Talin,
You make a good point. In our classes we strive to get the students working in mixed groups of all kinds. (Age, gender, cultural,etc.) We are training individuals for a career area and they will be working all of the above mentioned groups. We want them to be able to communicate with and understand where their fellow workers are coming from. A beginning career person has a different outlook on life than a 30 year veteran. Young adults for example have attended school with other young adults within 3 years of their age. In their first job they may be working with a person that is 55. They need to understand the difference between themselves and that person. Same can be said about cultural and/or language differences. We do our students a disservice if we don't help them understand difference.
Gary
I think the single most important thing we can do is to ensure all students are treated the same.
Applying or enforcing rules of behavior, grading, extra credit etc. If it is not consistant chaos will ensue as even when consistancy is applied some students whose experiences have taught them that they can get their exception if they can find the inconsistancy to exploit.
Hi Michael,
You captured the core of running a classroom, consistancy. Instructors have to strive for this in all that they do.
Gary
