The Reflection Of Diversity In The Classroom

At first glance, I will be totally honest, I knew little to nothing about diversity. I am a white female from a middle-class family and was lucky enough to never see a diversity problem in my schools. This course reiterated the fact that I was not aware of all the diversity in the classroom and the world today. Growing up, none of my teachers really discussed or related topics to cultural backgrounds other than the most common “white middle class”. My parents have always taught me to treat everyone the same no matter the color of their skin, religion, ability, disability, cultural background, sexual orientation, and values of life. I believed that my upbringing and surroundings contributed to the way I acknowledged diversity, but I was wrong. Diversity is more than just accepting the facts, but acting on the facts. Diversity indeed comes in many from the race, gender, ability/disability, age and cultural background is just a few. As a future educator, it is important for me to understand diversity and how to incorporate that into my future classroom. This class really helped me open up about what diversity means to me and how I can be an effective teacher to those who need me the most. For the first time, I was able to put in the effort to

It forced me to consider how deeply diversity is a realm in education. As the world is changing, it is becoming increasingly more important to be culturally aware. I think it is easy for teachers to look over the gloss of cultural, religious or physical diversity and just teach the standards. I feel like teachers are getting caught up with obeying the standards and teaching only to the test, which is causing a less diverse context in their classroom. Growing up, I felt as though I missed out on focusing on other diverse communities. This didn’t help my understanding of how cultural beliefs fit in the context of history and the rest of the