Components of Diverse and Inclusive Classrooms I

Jul 9, 2020

Components of Diverse and Inclusive Classrooms

Diversity within a schooling environment plays an important role in social and emotional development in the learner.

Some strategies that I would personally recommend to create a welcoming classroom environment is for the teacher to give students time to get to know each other’s name and discuss what their different cultures are.  

Often, we find that teachers have different cultures to that of their students. Through incorporating cultural diversity means that the students will display different ways of doing things from what the teachers are used to. This in turn helps both parties respect and get more familiar with others way of being that is not similar to their own.

Another method to recommend would be to allocate 5-10 minutes once a week to allow students to share something of themselves or what they did for the weekend. This tends to create a more relaxed classroom environment and everyone feels like they are important.

One method that works well at our school is on the first day of each term the students and teachers take time and discuss the classroom rules and work together to make a list of what rules are important within that class. This method encourages everyone to participate and feel like their opinion matters.

One area that our school could improve inclusive and diverse learning atmosphere is to provide teachers more support in this field as not many of them are trained to deal with or teach with these concepts. This idea is also supported by Healy, L. (2016) and mentions few teachers know how to deal with some of the difficult issues students of color face.

 

Reference:

Healy, L. (2016). K-12 school districts work to improve inclusion through teacher training. Insight into Diversity. Retrieved from http://www.insightintodiversity.com/k-12-school-districts-work-to-improve-inclusion-through-teacher-training/