Diversity in Today's Classroom

Today's classrooms are filled with a rainbow mix of diverse students from nearly every continent, making learning environments rich with experience, culture, language and history.

Children are curious about the world around them and how they relate to it. In order to better understand themselves and others, an exploration of cultures encourages cooperation and relationships.

Celebrating both similarities and differences, children appreciate what each person has to contribute, viewing themselves as empowered, global citizens.

Social psychological tendencies such as in-group/out-group bias, attribution errors and "us versus them" conflicts can be understood based on simplistic, rather than complex views of the world.

During my Social Psychology course, I have learned that mere contact alone does little to diffuse conflict between groups focused on categorization of "us" and "them".

Experience is made up of the successive construing of events. It is not constituted merely of the succession of events themselves. A person can be a witness to a tremendous parade of episodes and yet, if he fails to keep making something out of them, or if he waits until they have all occurred before he attempts to reconstrue them, he gains little in the way of experience from having been around them when they happened. It is not what happens around him that makes a man experienced; it is the successive construing and reconstruing of what happens, as it happens, that enriches the experience of his life. (Kelly 1955, 73).

George Kelly's Personal Construct Psychology

Teachers must incorporate diversity in the classroom. During the lessons involving world explorers, teachers should include a project researching African, Mexican, Indian, and Norwegian explorers in addition to the typical lessons on Spanish, English, and Portuguese world explorers.

Further, teachers should select textbooks and supplemental books that reflect culture, gender, and diversity within the world. Books should include children of different cultures, religions, disabilities, socioeconomic levels, gender preferences, and race.

Moreover, the students should be assigned art projects using traditional art around the world as examples. For example, if the activity is studying patterns and use of color, the teacher may use examples from Sioux, Celtic, Burmese, and Massa peoples. Teachers can also use music to stimulate the interest of their students.