Diversity in the Classroom

1. Describe purposeful classroom environments that promote diversity and encourage the students’ potential.

Classroom environments need to be accommodative of persons of different backgrounds, religions, races, ethnicities, status, sexual orientation, and nationalities. By doing this, the environments are able to promote diversity and encourage the students’ potential. The first step towards this goal is to acknowledge and respect diversity as explained by Garibay (2015). According to Garibay, the teacher should adopt different approaches to suit the different capabilities of the learners. A teacher can achieve this by setting clear learning targets and objectives with learners, consequently making learners have ideas on how they can achieve the same. The teacher should allow the students to go beyond the confines of the curriculum to explore, ask questions, and make judgments. In this, each students’ curiosity and thoughts in the subconscious can be brought to the surface and appreciated. An instructor, according to Treviño (2014), can use four tools/exercises, which are four corners exercise – active listening exercise, icebreakers, and mixing of students. The four corners exercise involves the grouping of students according to their different social characteristics. Ice breaking is getting students to become familiar and used to each other to reduce tension and conflict in the classroom.

• How will promoting diversity and encouraging student potential impact the learning environment and align with the Christian worldview?

By promoting diversity, students are able to view the classroom as an important place where students have the confidence to be themselves. Students are able to perceive that they belong and as such, have enhanced levels of participation and feelings of adequacy. Instructors too will feel in place based on their defining traits. These feelings will be consistent with the Holy Scripture’s view of the unity of the human race as explained in Acts 17:26. As such, diversity should not be viewed as a negative aspect but as an aspect that was designed right during creation; it is a concept we should practice all through our interactions with other humans. Joel 2:28-29 is rich in multicultural implications where the Bible explains that God will give his spirit to all humans, irrespective of their race.

References

Garibay, J. c. (2015). Creating a Positive Classroom Climate for Diversity. University of California Los Angeles.  Retrieved from https://equity.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/CreatingaPositiveClassroomClimateWeb-2.pdf

Treviño, J. (2014). Diversity and Inclusiveness in the Classroom. The University of Arizona Retrieved from  https://humanities.arizona.edu/files/Classroom%20Dialogue%20Guide%20.pdf