Understanding Cultures and Languages

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• While the Spanish alphabet is similar to the English one, the Korean alphabet is completely different. Before they can how to read and write, students will need to be able to recognize letters and their respective sounds.

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• The teacher will mainly have to be responsible for this. He/she should have a multitude of images around the classroom that students can use to help learn the alphabet as quickly as possible.

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• This should be done almost immediately. While introducing the students to the classroom and the other students, there should be words written in English. Read to them using books in English. Have them watch a video with English subtitles. But the students should be oversaturated with the English alphabet from the moment they enter the classroom.

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• This should be done initially in the classroom, but worksheets or even letting students take home picture books to try to read with their parents at home can help accelerate their learning process (and include their families in it, as well)

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• We will be teaching the students the English alphabet and the sounds related to each letter, which is fundamental base from which we can develop fluent readers and writers.

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• Initially, we should just teach the students to recognize the letters. After that, they will start learning the basic phonemes associated with each letter, and will learn how to decode short, easy words.

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• The teacher should have a way of measuring progress, either through one-on-one work, worksheets, or even having students physically show answers, such as touching the correct letter when it's said. The teacher should always be on guard for any students that are lagging behind their peers and take immediate corrective measures to figure out where the student is struggling.

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• For Korean students, the teacher could make an effort and learn the sounds that symbols make in the Korean alphabet, and could even use these to help new immigrant students recognize how sounds are similar, and which letters in the English alphabet match up with certain symbol in Hangul.

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• By working together and relying on one another, students can learn to appreciate each other for who they are, and realize that the cultural or ethnic differences aren't negative things. They can also learn to work with someone who has a different perspective than what they're used to and try to see things through someone else's eyes.

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• It is up to the teacher to create a system and an environment where this type of pairing seems natural to the students.

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• I beleive that there should be pair or group work every day, and that buddies should be switched up every week or two.

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• This should happen in the classroom. The teacher could also recommend that the students try to meet and do pair work outside of class, but this should only be done after the teacher feels like the students have built up a good rapport.

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• As much as possible, teachers should allow students to work in pairs and groups, and try to have students from different backgrounds always working together. It would also be a good idea to set up a buddy system, where students work with the same person for a couple of weeks before switching.

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• The teacher will initially make groups for students to work together, and will walk around and facilitate the group work as needed. The teacher shouldn't obviously be always joining together students from dissimilar backgrounds, as the goal is for all students, regardless of race, culture, gender, or socio-economic status, to form bonds with one another and learn to see the person who they truly are on the inside.

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• It's important for the teacher to keep track of the social nuances in the classroom. If this is an effective strategy, then students of different cultures or backgrounds should start spending time together as their appreciation and respect for one another grows. If this isn't happening, then the teacher should monitor the one-on-one time more closely and see if students are actually communicating and sharing ideas. If not, then he/she should help facilitate the conversation until the children are actually sharing on their own.

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• When I was in fifth grade, we had two students from Israel and Taiwan as exchange students in our classroom. Our teacher created a buddy system, which included them, and by giving them someone that they could trust and work with from the very beginning - usually one of the more popular students in the class - our teacher made sure that Assaf and Jinho were quickly assimilated into our classroom community.

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• It's important for students to realize that it's not just their classmates who shouldn't be judged by their background. By having people from each community come in and talk about their lives, first, students will be proud to have their own guest speakers come in. But, even more important, students will get a chance to experience other people's lives vicariously, and by getting the chance to see them as real people with real lives and hopes and dreams, it could help them be more understanding when they meet similar people in the future.

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• The teacher should make an effort to allow students to invite members of their community to be guests in the class, either for to give a presentation about their lives, or just as a short-time guest who can help out and get to know the students.

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• This depends on the teacher setting it up, after getting permission from the school. After that, it comes down to the students wanting to invite people from their communities into the classroom, and maybe the teacher will also have to make an effort and contact parents in order to encourage this kind of involvement.

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• The teacher should start things off by inviting her own guest speaker, and then make a big deal about it, and send home notices with the parents. She should then follow up with phone calls and try to set up a schedule that the students/parents can sign up for. The more proactive and excited the teacher is about making this happpen, the more likely it is that it'll become a reality.

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• It's good to develop routines in class, and this type of thing wouldn't take away too much classtime, and so once a week (or every two weeks, at most) would allow each student to invite someone in once, and it would could be part of the weekly structure that students could look forward to and depend upon.

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• This will take place in the classroom, but the act of making it happen will take place outside of the school, as students need to ask people that they know to come in and share their stories with the class.

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• Korean children can invite their grandparents and they could talk about what life was like in their previous country, bring in traditional cultural dishes, such as kimchi and bulgogi, and even share examples of traditional clothing or music, like hanbeok and sanjo.

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• If the teacher is doing this correctly, then students should be eager to have people from their community come in and share their lives with the students.  One good way to see if they are actually learning anything is to have students write about things that they remember learning a couple of weeks after someone was a guest speaker. It'll be a good chance to see if students are integrating the stories and knowledge about other cultures during these times.

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• By making it seem like all of our major discoveries were done by Europeans or North Americans, students develop a superior attitude because they never learn about how much more other cultures have contributed to world knowledge. If we give a fair view, then this will help in two major ways. One, it'll give the students a better idea about how much we should respect what other cultures and races have accomplished. And two, it'll give students from other countries a chance to feel proud about their own ancestors, and to realize that they, as well, made huge contributions to the world.

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• While our curriculum is improving, a lot of our materials are still Euro-centric, caucasian-dominated. When reading books to the class or assigning books, choose literature that is written by authors from different cultures, and set in different areas, both rich and poor, East and West, where people of all races and cultures have a chance to the main character. Also, when teaching about math, or science, or history, don't just pretend that science started in England in the 1600's. Asia, South America, and the Middle East have a long history of scientific and mathematical studies. Besides studying ancient Rome and Greece, focus on the rich histories of other cultures.

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• If the curriculum and textbooks aren't improved by administrators, then it's up to the teacher to find supplementary material and facts that will help give a less-skewed view of the world.

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• The teacher does need to teach the material as demanded by the school or state standards, but at the same time, he/she could add in extra little pieces of information that is relevant to other countries and cultures. Or, the teacher could assign certain research topics to the students so that they could maybe discover on their own what other people have done, and then they can share it with their peers.

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• This will mostly happen before class, when the teacher is preparing to teach the lesson. It could also be something that can be done in students' homes if the teacher assigns extra research topics for them to learn about.

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• Every day. This should be something that every teacher should strive to incorporate naturally into every lesson, so that students aren't surprised or skeptical that other countries and cultures have done amazing things as well.

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• For fourth graders, there is a ton of literature that gives multiple perspectives from different cultures and races. One lesson could read a biography about Nelson Mandela, and then also read Serafina's Promise, about a girl in Haiti who dreams of being a doctor. Bo at Ballard Creek is about a girl in Alaska in the 1920's who learns about the world around her and has dreams for the future. All of these books have common themes that can then be built upon to show how even though these people lived in different places and in different time periods, who they are inside is really quite similar. This way, besides learning about the new culture that they are joining, Korean and Mexican students are also being exposed to other cultures around the world.

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• Teachers should have a wide range of books available in the classroom. It's important to note which students are reading which books, and if more and more students start branching out and choosing books that based on things outside of their own cultures or experiences, then the teacher could see that their appreciation for different kinds of literature is growing.

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• The students should have the chance to show that their perspectives have been broadened after a few months of including multi-cultural teaching in the classroom. But this initially falls upon the teacher who needs to learn how to seamlessly integrate culturate understanding into the classroom.

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• After incorporating multi-cultural learning as much as possible for two months, teachers should offer students a choice for projects or speeches or anything where the choices involve ideas or people from many cultures and countries. Without telling the students WHY this is being done, the teacher should encourage the students to find out more about something that they're interested in, and hopefully it won't always be about things only related to their own culture.

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• After children have been exposed to a multitude of literature from different cultures, give them a chance to choose their two favorite books, and see if they choose books that aren't directly related to their cultures. Allow students to do research on other countries, or famous people from history, and see if they have learned that it's not their own country's people who matter. Teachers could also have students do reports on their top three or four favorite guest speakers that the class had, and explain what they learned from them.

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• If students don't have the chance to reflect upon what they have learned, and then have the chance to show that they have integrated new information into their memes which they can then pass onto others, then it's possible that what they have been learning won't be retained.

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• This should be started about two months into the school year, after students have had a chance to integrate these new perspectives. After that, it should be done every month or so to reinforce what they've been learning.

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• The learning will take place in the classroom, as can some of this work. But it'll be good to see if students can keep their open perspectives at home, when they're away from their classmates and their teacher.