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One way to integrate culturally competent learning activities into your environment
By Tobi Kibel Piatek | February 18, 2009
We often plan events for the college (where I work with International students) to create opportunities for American students, faculty and staff to meet international students and have exposure to new and different cultures.
In addition, we have started a new initiative to not only expose our students to Americans, faculty and staff, but also to expose international students to each other. Often when they arrive from their home countries they try and find a comfy place and seek out others from their host culture. This especially happens with our Asian students because we have so many living here as residents and attending our colleges. This not only keeps them from making friends outside their host culture, but also hinders their learning of English.
An activity that we just started:
We hold an open house day at each of our campuses to focus on two cultures (in the same room). The last one we had focused on bringing together two groups - Asian (Taiwanese, Japanese) and Middle Eastern (Saudi Arabia and Qatar).
All of these students had tables and could bring food, music, videos, clothing, art work, etc. and offer this to others as a learning tool. This event was held in a huge room and the results were fantastic! Our students and college community raved about this and what a wonderful opportunity it was to visit 4 different countries and their cultures within an hour and a half.
This event even spurred some of our students to talk to each other, when they may have never done so before. It was so rewarding to see a quiet Japanese girl talking to an Arabic male. In most situations, without this type of welcoming environment, that interaction would have never happened.
Topics: Culturally Competent, Relationship Strategy, Things to do |
May 6th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
Things I already do to make my mentoring relationships culturally competent are:
sharing stories about our families and traditions
celebrating each culture
reading about different cultures and their practices
being open and accepting to different lifestyles
working with different people in the community
training in specialty areas that focus on mixed cultures
Many of the results that come from these efforts are children being more open-minded and accepting of all people. They end up being more curious about different cultures and end up learning more about people around them. This also helps adults in the community understand, accept, and work together.
Some ways I can buld on my current efforts are by exploring diiferent cultures further with books, drawings, movies, and trips to museums. Also group projects within the community and in schools that celebrate all cultures and their differences will perhaps help open the minds of others.
May 28th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
chose to look at ‘The ABCs of Building Community’ which stands for Anti-Bias Classroom. The ideas are designed to engage kids/students in community-building activities. What’s taught in class must also be practiced outside of the classroom. This involves creating positive connections with others who may be of a different race, religion, or class. All the core subjects are included; history, language, math, etc.
I think this is one of themost important things children could learn. We live in a diverse country and we need to be accepting of our differences. This will result in a healthy community and healthy classroom.