Diverse Classroom Quotes

Multiculturalism compels educators to recognize the narrow boundaries that have shaped the way knowledge is shared in the classroom. It forces us all to recognize our complicity in accepting and perpetuating biases of any kind.

Student diversity in classrooms increases the need for diversity in teaching approaches.

Seek diverse authors, not just diverse books. If you want to truly decolonize your library seek more than a Black/Brown face on the cover of the book.

Rubbing shoulders and relating to each other in those classrooms and cafes, we had indulged our curiosities, about the coexistence of faiths, philosophies, and political options. Tolerance had also proven to us just how profitable diversity could be, not just financially but intellectually and emotionally, for those who could embrace it wholeheartedly.

instructional conversation, the kind of talk that acts like a mental blender, mixing together new material with existing knowledge in a student’s schema. Using discussion protocols like World Café, Four on a Pencil, and Give One Get One help create variety in the ways students talk to each other in the classroom, offering a chance to both work collaboratively and have their individual voices heard.

Can you see why Teresa DeBrito was so worried about Shepaug Valley? She is the principal of a middle school, teaching children at precisely the age when they begin to make the difficult transition to adolescence. They are awkward and self-conscious and anxious about seeming too smart. Getting them to engage, to move beyond simple question-and-answer sessions with their teacher, she said, can be “like pulling teeth.” She wanted lots of interesting and diverse voices in her classrooms, and the kind of excitement

Understand and influence students’ and teachers’ perceptions, tolerance, knowledge, and empathy about diverse populations to help increase students’ successful integration into American educational settings; Help teachers develop and implement tools and strategies in the classroom that encourage effective communication and understanding of and between members of diverse cultural backgrounds; Build and maintain collaborations between students, families, teachers, and other community members to assist diverse populations.

A more generous assessment of the learning styles movement is that, in attempting to address the inherent diversity of classrooms, it has broadened the range of pedagogical options available. As Jim Scrivener (2012: 106) argues, even if learning styles are simply unfounded hunches, ‘perhaps their main value is in offering us thought experiments along the lines of “what if this were true?” – making us think about the ideas and, in doing so, reflecting on our own default teaching styles and our own current understanding of learner differences and responses to them.

Microassaults involve misusing power and privilege in subtle ways to marginalize students and create different outcomes based on race or class. In the classroom, a microassault might look like giving a more severe punishment to a student of color than his White classmate who was engaged in the same behavior. Or it might look like overemphasizing military-like behavior management strategies for students of color. With younger children, it looks like excluding them from fun activities as punishment for minor infractions. Microinsults involve being insensitive to culturally and linguistically diverse students and trivializing their racial and cultural identity such as not learning to pronounce a student’s name or giving the student an anglicized name to make it easier on the teacher. Continually confusing two students of the same race and casually brushing it off as “they all look alike.” Microinvalidations involve actions that negate or nullify a person of color’s experiences or realities such as ignoring each student’s rich funds of knowledge. They are also expressed when we don’t want to acknowledge the realities of structural racialization or implicit bias. It takes the form of trivializing and dismissing students’ experiences, telling them they are being too sensitive or accusing them of “playing the race card.”

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the school-to-prison pipeline is a set of seemingly unconnected school policies and teacher instructional decisions that over time result in students of color not receiving adequate literacy and content instruction while being disproportionately disciplined for nonspecific, subjective offenses such as “defiance.” Students of color, especially African American and Latino boys, end up spending valuable instructional time in the office rather than in the classroom. Consequently, they fall further and further behind in reading achievement just as reading is becoming the primary tool they will need for taking in new content. Student frustration and shame at being labeled “a slow reader” and having low comprehension lead to more off-task behavior, which the teacher responds to by sending the student out of the classroom. Over time, many students of color are pushed out of school because they cannot keep up academically because of poor reading skills and a lack of social-emotional support to deal with their increasing frustration.

Making is a way of bringing engineering to young learners. Such concrete experiences provide a meaningful context for understanding abstract science and math concepts. For older students, making combines disciplines in ways that enhance the learning process for diverse student populations and opens the doors to unforeseen career paths.

The advantages of using account of the legal defense DUI professional According to a DUI or DWI they have very high values, and can be much more difficult, if not able to qualified lawyer in these types of services. It important to get the services of professionals who are familiar with the course of DUI criminal record because the team is almost certainly best, highest paid on the common law also working for many years in a row, and he is almost certain that the officials involved to enforce the law and choose the most effective way. The consumption can peak at promoting the method of blood flow to help ease and the minimum number of punches than likely. Even if you do not want the removal of a fence of a demo, it is deliberately allowed to produce only for the ingredients so suddenly that the interest will be at least in his imprisonment and the decision of the necessary business expense. Education Lawyer, worth DUI, because they understand the rules on the details of the DUI. Great leadership only recognizes attorneys who offer surgery that seemed to bend the lowest possible cost. Field sobriety tests are defense without success, and when the lawyer to provide classroom-oriented, to the surprise of identifying the brain decides what industry breathalyzer sobriety vote or still under investigation. Trying to fight against DUI private value, it may be impossible for the layman is that much of the Berufsrecht did. DUI lawyer can be a file with the management consultants can be used or deny the accuracy of the successful management of blood or urine witnesses. Almost always one day, you can not help learning tool. If there is a case where the amount, solid, is the legal adviser to shock and other consultants witnesses are willing to cut portions and finds out she has some tire testing and influence. Being part of the time, problems with eating problems and more experience DUI attorney in looks secrets and created. The idea that the lawyer is suddenly more than the end result of controlling historical significance of countless people do not share the court made. It very appropriate, qualified, but two at the end of every little thing that you do not agree even repentance and uses for what was happening right opportunity. It can not be argued, perhaps, costs, what seems to be one that includes many just go to the airport to record driving under the influence, but their professional experience and meetings, both issues related to diversity, Lange random taxation measures. Many people today claim that the market is in DUI cases, of course, exhausted, and are a lawyer, go to their rights in the region.

Systematically shifting instructional pedagogy in the classroom, and supporting the needs of diverse learners, is the hard part; but the part that matters most.

It is instructive rather than evaluative. The feedback is focused on correcting some aspect of the student’s performance—a step in a procedure, a misconception, or information to be memorized. It isn’t advice or a grade but some actionable information that will help the student improve. It is important to know the difference between the three types of feedback because not all feedback is actionable. It is specific and in the right dose. Your feedback should focus on only one or two points. Don’t point out everything that needs adjusting. That’s overwhelming for a dependent learner and may actually confirm her belief that she is not capable. It is timely. Feedback needs to come while students are still mindful of the topic, assignment, or performance in question. It needs to come while they still think of the learning goal as a learning goal—that is, something they are still striving for, not something they already did. It is delivered in a low stress, supportive environment. The feedback has to be given in a way that doesn’t trigger anxiety for the student. This means building a classroom culture that celebrates the opportunity to get feedback and reframes errors as information. Making Feedback Culturally Responsive: Giving “Wise” Feedback For feedback to be effective, students must act on it.

This type of anxiety attack can also be a form of internalized oppression, whereby the student internalizes the negative social messages about his racial group, begins to believe them, and loses confidence. In the classroom, anxiety interferes with his academic performance by releasing the stress hormone cortisol, which in turns reduces the amount of working memory available to him to do complex cognitive work. It also inhibits the growth of the student’s intellective capacity.

This technocratic–instrumental perspective on teaching and teacher learning has advocated deference to so-called educational experts, a teacher-proofing of the curriculum, and a devaluing of teachers’ own innovations and decisionmaking in their classrooms (Herrera & Murry, 2016; Jackson, 2015; Leopard, 2013).

The need for a fundamental sense of compassion has never been more visible than in our current higher educational context, where institutional resources and morale decline as the diversity and needs of our student population increase. To reverse what’s become decades’ worth of starvation budgets and an increasingly hostile political-cultural environment for higher education, we need to build a future radically different from our present. The work we do with and among our students— teaching and learning, creating and collaborating, building knowledge and burnishing confidence— is also the work of building that future. But that future can only come to pass if we involve as many students as possible in its creation. A future that’s shaped by processes that push significant numbers of students to the margins is one that will end up depressingly similar to our present. To militate against this outcome, we ought to begin dismantling the systems that marginalize our students. That’s a practice that starts in our own classrooms, in the routine choices we make every day about how we engage with our students and their stories— about what we say to them. An approach that embraces empathy and compassion as its default orientation is foundational to a pedagogy of radical hope.

The diversity discussion begins by asking questions about who’s missing from our communities, our classrooms, our boardrooms, and most importantly our churches. Next, we need to ask, where are they?

It is not enough to possess a shallow commitment to liberalism and racial justice that embraces racial and economic diversity at the school level, for example, while accepting (even encouraging) resegregation at the classroom level.

Kids are resilient. They understand way (WAY) more than adults give them credit for, and they pick up on unspoken cues when things aren’t explicitly expressed to them.

Robert lee saunders teacher qld The role of the teacher As we have seen so far, learning does not occur in the same way in everyone. Faced with this reality, the teacher has two options: Robert saunders teacher australia Use the differences that are presented to you as a potential that brings diverse talents to the group and that benefits everyone, or Treat them only superficially, or ignore them, and miss out on the great opportunity that diversity offers. It is necessary for the teacher to be able to create an atmosphere in the classroom that invites everyone to investigate, to learn, to build their learning, and not just to follow what he does or says. Robert lee saunders teacher australia The role of the teacher is not only to provide information and control discipline, but to be a mediator between the student and the environment. Ceasing to be the protagonist of learning to become the guide or companion of the student.

All too often, white-led organizations treat racial diversity as a commodity that can be used to build the institution. They are fine with our slang as long as they can co-opt it to make themselves look cool, but when we bring our words and phrases with us into the classroom, boardroom, or pulpit, they start to question our fitness for leadership. They’re fine with our clothes and our hairstyles when they can post pictures of us on their websites and social media, but if we’re going to hold any position of power or influence, they want us to look more “professional.” They can post #BlackLivesMatter on their socials, but when someone files a formal complaint about racism in the organization, they suddenly don’t understand how racism works.

Learning is not confined to the walls of a classroom; it flourishes in the embrace of diverse experiences and perspectives.

In transformative classrooms, diversity isn't just acknowledged; it's celebrated as a source of strength, enriching the educational experience for all.

Inclusive education principles advocate for learning environments that embrace and celebrate diversity and foster a sense of belonging and equity among all students.

Curriculum development is a journey carefully planned to guide students towards their learning goals, embracing diverse perspectives and insights along the way.

In curriculum design, collaboration is key, as diverse stakeholders come together to set clear goals and create a framework that ensures meaningful and engaging learning experiences for all students.

By embracing Gardner's Multiple Intelligences Theory, educators become architects of personalized learning experiences that honour the unique talents and abilities of every student. Through tailored instruction and diverse assessment methods, classrooms become vibrant ecosystems where each intelligence is valued and cultivated.

Facilitating global collaboration initiatives exposes students to diverse perspectives and cultures, fostering empathy, cross-cultural understanding, and collaborative problem-solving skills essential for success in a globalized world.

Steve Van Ert, a dedicated high school teacher, extends his passion beyond the classroom. This multifaceted individual not only imparts knowledge but also revels in diverse interests. From cooking up camping feasts to mastering the art of surfing and SUP boarding, Steve's pursuits include gardening, family card games, and cherishing moments with his kids and grandkids.

educators of English learners should be well-versed in theories of second language acquisition and in methodologies such as sheltering and scaffolding. Their work should be informed by professional development and coaching from experienced colleagues on effective techniques in the classroom. But is there no room for diversity in teaching styles and techniques? Is there really just one way to shelter instruction?

This book would be a great addition to a classroom library, especially considering its emphases on timeless and critical topics like discrimination and prejudice. –examiner.com, National Book Examiner

white privilege has so long shrouded us in the lie of its glory that we fail to see one of its most obvious limitations: that without exposure to the powerful cultural, linguistic, and historical differences that exist within diverse cultures, our students will be severely limited and underprepared global citizens in our richly diverse world.

My approach to teaching diverse Learners in the classroom is to meet their needs in the least obvious way possible so that they don't stick out as 'different'.

Of course you know the answer. You Muslims are good at math because you need to know how to make bombs.” Reading this, and the rest of my son’s essay, tore my heart. Even at thirteen years old in a math classroom in one of the most diverse cities on earth, my son faced hostility simply because of the family into which he was born. So much of my life was spent working to combat Islamophobia and raise awareness about its impact on

The median SAT score of blacks and Hispanics in Berkeley’s liberal arts programs was 250 points lower (on a 1600-point scale) than that of whites and Asians. This test-score gap was hard to miss in the classroom. Renowned Berkeley philosophy professor John Searle, who judges affirmative action “a disaster,” recounted that “they admitted people who could barely read.

This is not just a moral lapse; it is also an educational one. Rust’s “students of color” profoundly misinterpreted the dynamics of the classroom, seeing racial animus where none existed. Not only did the education school not correct the students’ misperceptions, it celebrated those students as heroes. The administration and complicit faculty have thus all but guaranteed that the protesters and their supporters will go through life lodging similar complaints against equally phantom racism and expecting a similarly laudatory response.

Being accused of microaggression can be a harrowing experience. Manhattan Institute Fellow Heather Mac Donald relates in City Journal how an incident got out of hand at the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2013. Professor Emeritus Val Rust taught a dissertation preparation seminar in which arguments often erupted among students, such as over which victim ideologies deserved precedence. In one such discussion, white feminists were criticized for making "testimonial-style" claims of oppression to which Chicana feminists felt they were not entitled. In another, arguments over the political implications of word capitalization got out of hand. In a paper he returned to a student, Rust had changed the capitalization of "indigenous" to lowercase as called for in the Chicago Manual Style. The student felt this showed disrespect for her point of view. During the heated discussion that followed, Professor Rust leaned over and touched an agitated student's arm in a manner, Rust claims, that was meant to reassure and calm him down. It ignited a firestorm instead. The student, Kenjus Watston, jerked his arm away from Rust as if highly offended. Later, he and other "students of color", accompanied by reporters and photographers from UCLA's campus newspaper, made a surprise visit to Rust's classroom and confronted him with a "collective statement of Resistance by Graduate Students of Color". Then the college administration got involved. Dean Marcelo Suarez-Orozco sent out an e-mail citing "a series of troubling racial climate incidents" on campus, "most recently associated with [Rust's class]". Administrative justice was swift. Professor Rust was forced to teach the remainder of his class with three other professors, signaling that he was no longer trusted to teach "students of color". When Rust tried to smooth things over with another student who had criticized him for not apologizing to Watson, he reached out and touched him in a gesture of reconciliation. Again it backfired. That student filed criminal charges against Rust, who was suspended for the remainder of the academic year. As if to punctuate the students' victory and seal the professor's humiliation, UCLA appointed Watson as a "student researcher" to the committee investigating the incident. Watson turned the publicity from these events into a career, going on to codirect the Intergroup Dialogue Program at Occidental College in Los Angeles. As for the committee report, it recommended that UCLA create a new associate dean for equity and enhance the faculty's diversity training program. It was a total victory for the few students who had acted like bullies and the humiliating end of a career for a highly respected professor. It happened because the university could not appear to be unsympathetic to students who were, in the administration's worldview, merely following the university's official policies of diversity and multiculturalism.

In such an atmosphere discussion filled all of our time that was not spent over our books. The professors held open house at their homes for the students who attended their seminars, which were in themselves advanced classes for discussion; a topic would be announced and the talk would continue through a blue haze of tobacco smoke into the small hours––after which we would relax for supper and for music. These evenings provided almost our sole social diversion. We were not at the university to play but to learn, and after a lecture in the classroom we would form little groups, gathering on the grounds or hunting empty seminar rooms and arguing excitedly for hours. These gatherings had a name. They were called the Steh-Convent, which can be translated with approximate accuracy as the “standing convention,” and for them we always sought out acquaintances with whom we vigorously disagreed.

Acknowledging that students learn on different timetables, and that they differ widely in their ability to think abstractly or understand complex ideas, is no different than acknowledging that students at any given age aren't all the same height. It is not a statement of worth but of reality.

In recent years, there’s been a lot of talk about the reasons behind the low performance of many students of color, English learners, and poor students. Rather than examine school policies and teacher practices, some attribute it to a “culture of poverty” or different community values toward education. The reality is that they struggle not because of their race, language, or poverty. They struggle because we don’t offer them sufficient opportunities in the classroom to develop the cognitive skills and habits of mind that would prepare them to take on more advanced academic tasks (Boykin & Noguera, 2011; Jackson, 2011). That’s the achievement gap in action. The reasons they are not offered more opportunities for rigor are rooted in the education system’s legacy of “separate and unequal” (Kozol, 2006; Oakes, 2005).

I remember having a conversation with a teacher who could not figure out why her relationship with her African American students felt strained. She was especially troubled that several African American girls in her class had refused to participate in a mask-making activity in which the kids placed plaster strips across their face all the way up to their hairline. One girl spoke up and told the teacher that her mother would be upset with her if she got water or the grainy plaster in her hair. The teacher causally dismissed their concerns and insisted they do the activity along with everyone else. The teacher was unfamiliar with the significance of hair in African American culture—how it’s cared for, its connection to self-esteem and self-expression. In turn, she missed an opportunity to affirm the students’ cultural needs by simply making scarves available in the classroom when doing activities with water, sand, or any other substance that might mess up their hair. Whether it’s being insensitive to Muslim students fasting during Ramadan by having a class party with food and drink or ignoring a low-income family’s ability to provide money for a field trip, these small actions chip away at trust and personal regard that are at the core of authentic relationships. This lack of care leads to mistrust, which, over time, can put students (and parents) on the defensive. This underlying mistrust is the reason some parents seem antagonistic. They become defensive and protective based on the perception that the teacher doesn’t care.

Dewey (1938) reminds us that if school isn't for today, it will often turn out to be for nothing.

I question why politicians dictate policies for teachers, when most have never set foot in a classroom.

Classroom structures and processes need to tend to the emotional well-being of everyone rather than just on covering the day’s lesson plan.

When I talked about World War II, I only really knew about the Holocaust, Japanese internment, and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and was certain that they were all equally bad. I could interrogate someone else’s privilege like a Spanish Inquisitor, but wash my hands of my own like Pontius Pilate. I knew exactly which side of the classroom I belonged in when the teacher of my social justice class (yes, this is a thing) divided us into “privileged” vs. “underprivileged” categories in twelfth grade. And perhaps most revealingly, I’d never had to read George Orwell’s 1984. He’d been shelved to make room for a local writer’s story of a poor Indian boy by the time I showed up. I realize now how poisonously deliberate this last omission was. Because in retrospect, what I was really being taught, more than this junk diet of useless knowledge, was a classic instance of what Orwell himself famously described as doublethink. That is, the act of believing two mutually exclusive things at once. In my case, I was being taught to believe that, first, I was special, unique, important, and great beyond words; second, that I was completely equal to everyone, which is to say average and mediocre. I was taught that diversity is unity. That to regress is to progress. That bullying was Hitler. That George W. Bush was doubleHitler. That British colonizers of Canada were doubleplusHitler. That we have always been at war with Hitler, however defined.

Many theories have been advanced to explain racial gaps in performance, of which these are the most common: black and Hispanic schools do not get enough money, their classes are too big, students are segregated from whites, minorities do not have enough teachers of their own race. Each of these explanations has been thoroughly investigated. Urban schools, where non-whites are concentrated, often get more money than suburban white schools, so blacks and Hispanics are not short-changed in budget or class size. Teacher race has no detectable effect on learning (Asians, for example, outperform whites regardless of who teaches them), nor do whites in the classroom raise or lower the scores of students of other races. Money is not the problem. From the early 1970s to the 2006-2007 school year per-pupil spending more than doubled in real terms. The Cato Institute calculates that when capital costs are included, the Los Angeles School District spends more than $25,000 per student per year, and the District of Columbia spends more than $28,000. Neither district gets good results. Demographic change can become a vicious cycle: As more minorities and immigrants enter a school system average achievement falls. More money and effort is devoted to these groups, squeezing gifted programs, music and art, and advanced placement courses. The better-performing students leave, and standards fall further.