How to promote cultural awareness in the classroom

Now that you have an understanding of the variety of cultures represented in your class (or of the various regions and populations your students would like to learn about), it’s time to celebrate! Here are several ways you can have fun with your students exploring different cultural groups and traditions.

1. Cultural Dress Show and Tell

Have your students find pictures of different items of clothing that people wear in different cultures and groups. Some examples can include Jewish yarmulkes or Muslim burkas, which are different kinds of head coverings in these respective religious traditions.

Start with clothing that reflects the various cultures represented in your classroom—having students participate by sharing items or styles that are specific to their culture—or you can expand to even more cultures around the world, letting your students select one that interests them.

Discuss each of the items your students have shared pictures of and have your students explain why that particular item is worn in the culture it comes from and how the style or tradition originated.

2. Host a Multicultural Day

If your classroom is diverse, have your students present information on different aspects of their own cultures. If your classroom is not particularly diverse, have each of your students choose an area of the world they’d like to focus on and research. You can also concentrate on the cultures that are represented in the history of your broader area, state, or region.

Students can create brochures or posters that highlight various aspects of their diverse backgrounds, the areas their ancestors are from or the region and cultures which they chose to study. Have them present these to the class virtually or in person for your multicultural event.

Multicultural days used to involve trying foods from different cultures but since that is not ideal right now, you can have your students share a picture of a dish and recipe unique to their culture so the other students can make it at home with their parents!

3. Have a World Music Dance Party

Exploring the music of different countries and cultures is another fun way to celebrate cultural diversity in your classroom, whether in person or online.

Have students bring in (or send in digital form) music that represents their cultural heritage. Your students can also bring in or share instruments that are specific to their culture’s music.

You can use videos on the Internet to teach your students about songs and dances from different regions of the world. Have your students listen to particular instruments in the songs. Talk to them about what makes each song or dance unique: Is the music fast or slow, loud or soft? Are the movements small and subtle, or big and bold? You can even try some of the dances as a class!

Discuss with your students how people enjoy music and dance all around the globe—it’s something that human beings all have in common—while pointing out how each different group has its own particular way of singing and dancing.

Celebrate how we can experience and enjoy music from other cultures without necessarily knowing the language or cultural customs that go into it. Music is universal!

PROJECT IDEA

Have your students write about a specific type of music that either comes from their own culture or that they learned about and researched in class. They can include the history of the music, why it is significant and describe what it sounds like. Have them include an illustration of the instruments used to create the music or draw a picture of themselves dancing to the music if it is difficult to identify the instruments. Then, take their work and publish it into a musical multicultural classbook!

4. Create a Classroom Collage

As mentioned above, representation matters. And what better way to represent and celebrate your students than to display their photos in the classroom?

If you’re doing in-person learning, take photos of your students. You can also have each student bring a picture of themselves from home—sharing baby pics can be especially fun. If you’re teaching remotely, you can have children send you digital photos, or even use your computer’s screenshot feature with your distance-learning platform to “take photos” of your students with their permission of course!

Once you have pictures of all of your students, put them together in a collage. If they’ve provided both current pictures and photos from the past, you can do “then” and “now” collages. You can also add in the countries that their heritage stems from to the images.

Even if your students and their parents (or even grandparents)  were born in the U.S. you can add the countries that their ancestors immigrated from if the information is available.

Display these collages prominently in your virtual or in-person classroom so that your students can literally see themselves as part of the class.

Reflections of your students in the classroom environment will foster a sense of belonging.

5. Make Global Friends

Learning about the characteristics that differentiate people all around the world is one thing, but actually meeting people from different countries and cultures is another—there is simply no substitute for connecting and interacting with people who are different from ourselves.

Use a site like ePals to pair students up with a partner from another school in a different country. Have your students send messages to their new global penpals—discussing different seasonal traditions is one great way to get students sharing and learning about one another.

Making friends from different countries and cultural groups will be an excellent way to get your students excited to learn about different world cultures.

You can schedule time for your students to have a question-and-answer session with their new partner visitor using questions your students prepare ahead of time can prove extremely engaging and insightful for everyone.

PROJECT IDEA

Have your students take the information they received from the question and answer session to compare their partner’s culture in their country to their own. They can then write out the similarities and differences that they discovered and add a drawing of themselves and their new friend doing the specific activities that they compared in their writing. You can then take all of your students’ work and create an awesome classbook that can be shared with your new friends across the globe!

Leave a comment below and let us know how you celebrate diversity in the classroom. You can also reach out to us on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter any time!

Studentreasures provides FREE classbook publishing kits. Creating a classbook is not only a fun activity that teaches students about the writing process, it can also help increase engagement and build their confidence as young writers.

Click here to learn more about how the process works and see how your students can become published authors!

The National Center for Education Statistics released a report in February of 2019, stating that the school-age population in the United States is becoming more racially and ethnically diverse.

Being a teacher is no easy task, but it should not be a big ask to make sure you are creating a positive learning environment in which your students feel safe.

When we decided to become teachers, it was understood that our job was to:

• Present and prepare effective lessons
• Observe and evaluate student performance
• Assign work, tests, and classwork
• Communicate effectively

With all that has happened in the world over the last few years, it is more important now, than ever, to maintain those ideals and not interject your own thoughts on politics and policy. You are to remain impartial and focused on creating a safe, inclusive environment for your students.

So how can we begin to promote cultural awareness in our classrooms?

1. Understand and recognize that your students all have different values shaped by diverse backgrounds.
   • Never assume anything about your students that isn’t purely academic.
2. Your students today are exposed to more of the world than any generation prior. That is a massive amount of exposure.
   • They need to be taught to learn and appreciate the cultures from around the world.
3. Finally, cultural awareness is identified with how your students connect with people they meet.
   • When students are more culturally aware of their peers, that will lead to more constructive conversations and decision making about the people they will meet in their lives.

Fostering cultural awareness in your students is not a strategy, but more of a mindset.  Get to know your students, proudly plaster the classroom walls with their work, choose reading materials that represent your classroom diversity, and teach compassionate lessons that embrace values and incorporate cultures to make the students feel valued and respected.

For more tips, tricks, and tools for teaching in and out of the classroom, check out more articles on the Teq Talk blog.

We also offer virtual professional development, training, and remote learning support for educators with OTIS for educators. Explore the technology, tools, and strategies that can spark student success — no matter where teaching or learning are happening.