"Accomodating" or Embracing

It may not be easy to accommodate, ethnic diversity, religious diversity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic disparity, language-minority students and students who are at-risk in a classroom, but that is the job of many teachers. To accommodate to all students, you need to not just accommodate them, you need to embrace them. All my students will have different attributes and different struggles. It is my job to find a way to reach them.

To embrace these students we need to show a respect for their differences into the classroom. In some cases, this respect might be in the form of bringing their differences into the lessons. This is applicable with language- minority students and ethnically diverse students.  We can embrace our language-minority students by being aware of the struggles they may have adapting to an English speaking classroom. As the book advices, we can try not to speak in idioms and perhaps pair them up with an English speaking classroom. As a future teacher, I can use English books that have Spanish words mixed in to help with the ELL Hispanic students.

We can embrace ethnically diverse students by having lessons that incorporate their ethnicity. We can use their knowledge of another culture to our classroom’s advantage. It is important to embrace the differences in an appropriate way. When I was at the Middle East Education Conference at UWGB, the point was brought up that sometimes when teachers try to incorporate Middle Eastern subject matter they end up being offensive to the Middle Eastern students. The example was given of a school which handed out Hijabs to women students so the women “could know what it felt like to be Middle Eastern.” The Middle Eastern students were offended because the simple wearing of a Hijab does not delve deep enough into the understanding of their culture.   

We need to be careful not to offend any of our students. We should watch for students in the classroom who may make discouraging comments to students of a different sexual orientation or of a low socioeconomic status. These students, the ethnically diverse, religiously diverse, of a different sexual orientation, in socioeconomic disparity, language-minority students and students who are at-risk are those who need us to embrace them the most.