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An Intercultural Classroom
Introduction
The demographics of society have changed. The social
context has diversified to meet globalization demands. This
brings immigration and new forms of citizens. Cultures,
religions, sexual orientation, and races are so diverse in the
U.S.A. that schools need to be reformed. The value of
intercultural communication for a multicultural school is
important. Even though there are mono-cultural geographical
schools, the schools need to be ready to diversify. This paper
will discuss multicultural schools and how they work for
different backgrounds of students. This paper will also discuss
opportunities gained and opportunities missed by these schools,
along with some ideas and implementations that are viable to
address the success of such diverse communities and classrooms.
Community Demographics
A community supports many individuals. These individuals
can be diverse or single group inhabitance. Today, a mono-
cultural, ethnic, racial, religion, or sexual orientation is hard
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to find. This is making school reform an important priority
within communities. This is because, “Local control has meant
that curriculum decisions and school improvement efforts
(1) have been made at the local community level and (2) attempts
have been made to match improvement efforts with local priorities
and interests” (Armstrong, Henson, & Savage, 2009, pp. 19-20).
This can be understood that, as a community changes, so do the
efforts to change the schools within the community, in order to
include the academic needs of the community. So, in order for a
community to be able to survive, it must be able to change. This
is not an easy task for the community.
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A community has many segregated parts. It seems that there
is always a hierarchy that controls segregation. The term
“across the tracks” has been around for years. This is a
representation of segregation.
In looking at three different groups: religion, ethnicity,
and economy, there are signs of segregation in both the schools
and in the community. It seems that when one group overlaps,
another segregates it. For example, many Hispanics are Catholic,
which creates a common bond, but say hypothetically that most
Catholics are mid- to high income, and most Hispanics are low
income. This pushes a wedge between the common bonds, allowing a
segregation to occur. This is a common occurrence in most
communities. There are sections of a community that are high
income, low income, Catholic, Protestant, Hispanic, African
American, etc. This segregation bleeds in to the schools of the
community.
Three students from different aspects can have difficult
times learning in a classroom. Focusing on a Catholic student,
there is a background that has an opinion that creates a conflict
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from normal teaching. Catholicism is deeply rooted in to the
beliefs of creationism and pro-life, among other things. These
beliefs are so ingrained that teaching a high school girl about
abortion or evolution, or even placing her in a group that
denounces GOD can be disastrous.
A fifteen year old student named Mary has a Catholic
religion. There is no Catholic school to attend, so she goes to
a public school. There is only one Catholic Church. Mary has
moved from an area where she attended a Catholic school and this
is her second year in a public school. Mary received her name
from the mother of Jesus, so she is pressured to follow strict
religious rules to keep her pure.
Mary lives in a home that practices the Roman Catholic
faith. Her family practices Lent an event of giving up a
precious desire, like certain foods or drink for a period of time
leading up
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to the Easter celebration. They attend mass every Sunday, as and
partake in the ritual of confession. Mary’s family believes
strongly in pro-life, no homosexuality, and a relationship only
with GOD until married. Having these beliefs in an area that has
an open mind about personal values is very scary for Mary. The
communication barrier is installed through a belief system
ingrained in all but two years of her life.
The Hispanic culture varies in many ways. There is
language, values, beliefs, and culture that produce the Hispanic.
Hispanics are family-oriented with a Roman Catholic religion.
These are proud people and speak their native tongue at home. As
a result of using their native tongue at home or with family,
they carry a heavy accent. This can create a problem with
speaking to others. “Hispanics tend to be reserved about public
speaking because of their heavy foreign accent” (Clutter & Nieto,
n.d., para. 6). Male high school Hispanics can cause
frustration, due
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to other students not being able to understand him. This, in
turn, can produce hatred toward a student, because what is not
understood is hated by many people.
Juan is a fifteen year old student who has a hard tie
speaking, reading and understanding the English language. He
lives in a small Hispanic community, and the culture is rich
within the community. In this cultural setting, hierarchy is
prominent through age; the older the person is, the higher they
rank. The Hispanics are proud people; therefore, their native
language is used. This does not help Juan in learning a new
language. It is a custom for families to come home from school
or work to have a meal together, usually for lunch. This type of
activity deprives Juan of socialization with other students.
Being that Juan and his family are immigrants also creates a
prejudice. Juan has a stigma consciousness. “Stigma
consciousness is the extent to which people are self-conscious
about being a member of a stereotyped group and expect to be
stereotyped by others” (Guyll, Madon,
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Prieto, & Scherr, 2010, p. 118). Because of this, Juan is a
perfect target for prejudice. Juan is also discriminated against
at school, because of his problem with English.
Socioeconomic stratification plays a major role in the home,
community, and school.
It is stated that, “About 53% of the high income students
expected to attend graduate school, while 22% of the low-income
students expected to do so” (Armstrong, Henson, & Savage, 2009,
p. 87). This is due to dropout rates in high school, which is in
relation to helping economically with the household. While a lot
of low SES (socioeconomic status) students work hard to achieve
academic success, in order for a better achieve status, many
students can be difficult to teach due to the mental – and
emotional – feeling of never being able to increase their status.
They also may try get-rich-quick techniques like joining gangs or
selling drugs. These types of high school students are hard to
communicate with.
Tommy, a fourteen year old boy who is an example of low SES,
can be a problem with academic achievement and communication.
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Tommy lives with his mother and one older brother and one younger
brother. He comes from a broken home where the parents are
divorced, due to domestic violence. Tommy watches his younger
brother after school, because his mother works two jobs in order
to make ends meet. Tommy’s older brother is living at home and
has a drug problem and is in and out of jail.
Tommy’s life is not as different as other low SES students.
The Urban Institute fact
sheet states:
The vast majority of low-income parents today are
working but still struggling to make ends meet:
struggling to find and keep a toehold in a changing
labor market, to keep up with their bills, to pay the
spiraling costs of essentials like healthcare and
housing, and to raise children with a chance of future
success. (2013)
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Although there are many likenesses, there are differences, like
Tommy’s brother who has a drug problem. This problem takes money
out of the household, due to bonds for jail for which Tommy’s
mother pays. Another difference is that Tommy has little time
for study, because he watches his younger brother. This weighs
heavy on Tommy and distances him from the classroom. It is hard
to communicate with a fourteen year old boy who has much on his
mind.
Community Resources and Social Services with Potential Barriers
There are many resources and social services that can be
found within a community. Outreach programs, food banks, police,
community centers, and libraries are just a few examples of
resources and services that can be found in almost every
community. The question is: are there barriers keeping these
services and resources from being effective in a multicultural
community? There are barriers that can be found if someone looks
hard enough.
When looking at the local library, there are many barriers.
“In many minority languages, the scarcity of published resources
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may make it impossible to provide library materials to the same
standards as for the majority languages” (Pestell, 2009, p. 4).
This makes it difficult for a multicultural community to
establish a communication network. A good communication network
for a community is a library, and if there is little diversity,
the network is of little use.
There is also the librarian and staff that should be
bilingual, but rarely are. These are important people, because
they can order proper material for the community. It would be
hard to order a book for someone if the librarian does not
understand the language. This problem also occurs for indexing.
If Juan wanted a book in Spanish, and no library staff or index
card was in Spanish, Juan would have a difficult time finding
what he needed.
Social services can also have barriers in a community that
impedes an understanding of multicultural areas. Many social
services have a bilingual service to help immigrant families.
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Bridging Refugee Youth & Children’s Services (BRYCS) has a
refined definition of cultural competence which states:
The ability of individuals and systems to respond
respectfully and effectively to people of all cultures,
classes, races, ethnic backgrounds, sexual
orientations, and faiths or religions in a manner that
recognizes, affirms, and values the worth of
individuals, families tribes, and communities, and
protects and preserves the dignity of each (2007).
This is a good idea if workers carried no biases.
When social services carry a biased attitude due to the
community, barriers are set in place. “It is far easier to
pigeonhole people according to our preconceptions and biases, but
the deeper struggle is to try to understand people on their own
terms” (Bode & Nieto, 2012, p. 38). This would be a simpler
world if people did not carry a bias or preconception of others.
The problem is that the community controls the offices, both
school and city. This leaves the minority or low SES families
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and students in an area that forces their own ideology and
culture on to those minority and low SES families.
Action Plan
In order to develop an action plan, one must think of each
student individually, instead of a group. The idea is to take
each student’s barriers and produce a lesson plan that can have
the ability to break down each barrier. This is not an easy task
because of the many barriers found within the community and
school. Once the lesson plan has been originated, though, the
effects of a multicultural classroom, school, and community begin
to appear.
By becoming an active teacher within the community, many
things can appear that can help produce an action plan. Bode &
Nieto (2012) express that if an educator would, “study the
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demographics of your classroom, grade level, team, or school” (p.
377), an educator can have the ability to surround his/her
students with an exotic array of culture, ethnicity, religion,
values, and beliefs that would accompany most groups inside the
classroom and groups the students would meet within the
multicultural community or society as a whole.
What needs to be done is to involve the educator with
multicultural activities. For example, on Cinco de Mayo the
Hispanics celebrate the national holiday. The Hispanic community
has a festival and the streets fill with Hispanic culture. It is
at this time that an educator can immerse him/herself in to the
culture. This can open the door to new ideas in the classroom,
as well as new ideas for the community. Having a celebration at
the city part or the city library, or even the municipal building
lawn – provided a license can be obtained – can bring a community
together, while establishing a multicultural setting.
Looking at Juan and his trouble with linguistics, there is
no better place to finding out what kind of culture and community
that he deals with than a Hispanic celebration. Here, a teacher
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can openly talk to others in his community and get help with
dealing with his problems. Teacher/parent night at the school is
good, but being out in the community gives a sign to the parents
and community that Juan and all students, as well as the
community, are important.
Mary’s religion exposes condemnation, and getting involved
with some of her extracurricular activities could shed some light
on how she partakes within the community. By attending dinners
and garage sales, or even a picnic, a realization of how her
religion interacts with the community and vice-versa can be
achieved. “Teachers should realize that students who are racial
or ethnic minorities see, view, and perceive themselves and
others differently than those who are of the majority group”
(Cooper & Jeffy, 2011, p. 73). When it comes to religion, a
minority is the lesser in the community. By understanding Mary’s
religion and understanding
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how the community sees this religion, an evaluation of her needs
can be identified. By sharing with others in the community the
ideology of cooperation and respect, the teacher makes it known
that they care about their students.
Tommy, with a low SES and a broken family, is stereotyped.
The action plan is to help Tommy show the community that he is an
individual that can be a successful part of the community. It is
important to let an individual define him/herself, because:
If we can not define – and do not give young people
ample opportunities to
define – the skills, values, attitudes, knowledge and
commitments that we want with as much force as we can
define those that we do not want, we will fail (Ferber,
et al., 2003, p. 6).
By creating activities in and out of school, Tommy will be
able to show others that he is willing to work hard and be the
individual that he deserves to be. By asking Tommy to help with
a float during Homecoming, he can show other students his skills.
Tommy can do things at home while watching his little brother,
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like making paper carnations. The teacher can obtain a work
schedule, so that a small school carnival or library reading
circle can be planned when Tommy is free from babysitting. For
academic means, the teacher can build a lesson plan that has
little homework so students like Tommy can indulge in learning
outcomes.
There are many ways to produce breakdowns in barriers
between families and communities. By being a part of the social
structure and finding ways to help students and teachers show
they care, a community can be brought together. Each student is
an individual, and each family is part of a community. All that
is needed is to break down the preconceptions, biases, and
stereotyping, in order to have a multicultural community become a
social network.
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Intercultural Communication Techniques and Strategies in Diverse
Classes
The classroom is where teachers begin multicultural
interactions. “Cultural influences can be found in interactional
or communication styles, that is, the ways individuals interact
with one another and the messages they send, intentionally or
not, in their communication” (Bode & Nieto, 2012, p. 166). The
classroom is the best place to observe this process. In order to
procure relationship skills with these students, first one must
observe the styles the students possess.
By designing a UDL, the class becomes multicultural. One of
the easiest ways to present and utilize a UDL is through
technology. This is expensive and many school budgets usually
have to abandon new technology. “School leaders have struggled
to maintain existing operations, while also responding to demands
for computer purchases, equipment replacement, new software
purchases and upgrades, internet connections, teacher training,
and maintenance services for computer equipment and networks”
(Armstrong, Henson, & Savage, 2009, p. 298). By trying to push
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for this type of UDL, it shows a lack of seriousness about the
school’s ability for academic and community well-being. It is
best to be able to create without a lot of funds and with heart.
This shows seriousness about the school and community.
By creating a visually diverse classroom, students can feel
at ease. Pictures and decorations tell a story in a classroom.
Maybe, a clock that has the numbers spelled or written in
different languages would gain interest from parents, students,
and faculty. When students actually see their group identities
established in the classroom, they become attentive, and this is
progress toward academic accomplishment.
Another strategy is group work. This allows students to
work with each other and learn from each other. When a student
is at home and discusses what they have learned from other
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students, open-mindedness occurs from other family members. This
reaction carries weight throughout a community in taking away
biases that occur from lack of knowledge.
Communication is also an important part of teaching and
social networking. Communication is as simple as a smile.
Strategies in communication are not to look down on others. In a
classroom, a teacher is part of the resource of the curriculum.
By giving instruction, an educator needs to be like a video book.
By keeping a neutral identity, the students will be more apt to
listen, because they are not looked down upon as a jailor would
look upon criminals.
Going over activities and instruction with other faculty
member’s opinions and strategies can be the key to successful
academic achievement in the classroom. Other teachers can
identify communication flaws that are overlooked. By the way a
teacher’s posture appears could be offensive to other cultures or
could even be frightening. Other faculty members can also help
with linguistic problems. Teachers are always looking for ways
to reach children through linguistics. Maybe, one teacher has a
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connection with a person who has books that can help in Spanish,
Russian, Chinese, etc. It is important to remember that cultures
have different learning styles, and the process of working with
other faculty members helps with understanding how he/she
communicates with others.
Communities and schools miss out on a culturally rich area
when they do not have an open mind to see people as individuals.
Schools process students in a package, not seeing the advantages
of multicultural classrooms. The students are individuals.
Mary, Tommy, and Juan all carry the ability to achieve academic
learning, but are stopped by the community and school. It takes
educators to try to break down these barriers. This is done
through interaction with the community, as well as through school
activities. It seems that the breaking of barriers has to be
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done, in order to see exactly what a true multicultural society
is. Educators are the foundation on which these barriers can be
broken, and communities brought together.
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References
Armstrong, D., Henson, K., & Savage, T. (2009). Teaching today: an
introduction to education
(8th Ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
Bode, P. & Nieto, S. (2012). Affirming diversity: the sociopolitical context of
multicultural
education (6th Ed.). San Francisco: Allyn and Bacon.
BRYCS. (2007). Cultural competency in child welfare practice: a
bridge worth building.
Retrieved from
http://www.brycs.org/documents/upload/brycs_spotwinter2007.pdf
Clutter, A., Nieto, R. (n.d.). Understanding the Hispanic culture.
Retrieved from
http://ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/5000/5237.html
Cooper, J., & Jeffy, S. (2011). Toward a conceptual framework of
culturally relevant pedagogy:
an overview of the conceptual and theoretical literature. Retrieved from
http://0-files.eric.ed.gov.opac.acc.msmc.edu/fulltext/EJ9149
24.pdf
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Ferber, T., Irby, M., Pittman, K., Tolman, J. (2003). Preventing
problems, promoting
development, encouraging engagement. Retrieved from
http://dev.forumfyi.org/files/Preventing%20Problems,
%20Promoting%20Development,%20Encouraging%20Engagement.pdf
Guyll, M., Madon, S., Prieto, L., & Scherr, K., (2010). The
potential roles of self-fulfilling
prophecies, stigma consciousness, and stereotype threat in linking Latino/a
ethnicity and
educational outcomes. Retrieved from
http://madon.public.iastate.edu/PAPERS%20ON%20HOMEPAGE/
LatinoFinalVersion.pdf
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Pestell, R. (2009). Multicultural communities: guidelines for library services.
Retrieved from
http://www.ifla.org/files/assets/library-services-to-
multicultural-populations/publications/multicultural-
communities-en.pdf
The Urban Institute. (2013). Low-income working families: facts and figures.
Retrieved from
http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/900832.pdf
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