Teaching Children with Diverse Needs

1. Teaching Children with Diverse Needs

2. Women Men African American Anglo American Asian American Hispanic American Native American A person with a disability A person who is homeless What stereotypes come to mind

3. Stereotyping • Along with visual stereotyping sayings should also be discouraged in stereotyping-No way Jose’ and Indian giver

4. Children from Diverse Backgrounds • African American Children • Hispanic American Children • Asian American Children • Native American Children

5. African American Children (Bennett, 1995) • Feelings oriented and personal interactions • Nonverbal communication • Teaching strategies that stress cooperative learning rather than competition • Rich tradition of oral story telling and listening

6. Hispanic American Children (Garcia, 1992) • Family and ethnic loyalty • Interpersonal relationships • Parents and teachers are highly valued

7. Asian American Students (Feng, 1994) • Respect for authority and submergence of individual • Responsibility for relatives • View teachers as having high status • Respect for elders and deferred gratification

8. Native American Children (Banks, 1994) • Cultural preservation • Holistic and shared view of the world • Elders are highly respected and held in high esteem • Value sharing and cooperation • Learn through observation and patience

9. Other Key Factors • Development of language is closely connected to cognitive development • Learning in the first language helps a child gain knowledge more than attempting to learn the same knowledge in a language in which the child has little comprehension.

10. Recommendations • Recognize all children are cognitively, linguistically, and emotionally connected to the language and culture of their home • Acknowledge that children can demonstrate their knowledge and capabilities in many ways(diverse learning styles)

11. Instructional Practices of Culturally Response Teachers • Hold high expectations for all students • Achieve and maintain high levels of student involvement in learning tasks • Have a strong sense of self-efficacy • Create meaningful classroom activities built on students’ home cultural experiences

12. Where Do I Begin?

13. Before the school year starts • Access information about the community your school is in • Access basic information about school-population, test scores etc. • Get to know your families

14. During the School Year • Get to know the families • Review your student’s files for information regarding-name of primary caregiver, home language(s) spoken, special academic needs, possible ethnic background • Develop list of possible methods of communication for families (notes, person-to person, e-mail, telephone, fax etc) pages 126-127 letters)

15. Developing the Curriculum • Anti-basis curriculum-curriculum that challenges prejudice, stereotyping, bias, and the “isms.” • Bias- any attitude, belief, or feeling that results in, and helps to justify, unfair treatment of an individual because of his or her identity. • Multicultural curriculum-teach other’s culture so that they will learn to respect each other and not develop prejudice • Tourist curriculum-teach culture through celebrations and through artifacts such as food, traditional clothing and household implements Multicultural activities are separate from daily ongoing curriculum

16. Assumptions and Issues involving curriculum and diversity • Teacher assumes multicultural curriculum in needed only in a multicultural classroom • Multicultural curriculum is standardized and not addressing the unique needs and backgrounds of the students in the class • Multicultural Education may focus on the information about other countries and not issues related to Americans.

17. Recommendations (A.B.C. Task force; Derman-Sparks, 2000) • Dangers of tourist curriculum should be avoided instruction • Focus of Curriculum should incorporate all students particularly those in the classroom • All students should participate in cultural diversity in instruction

18. Creating an Positive Atmosphere in the Classroom • Images of children and adults of various ethnic groups should be in the classroom • Avoid tokenism-representation of only one or two of a certain ethnic group • A fair balance of men and women shown in the classroom doing a variety of jobs ( in the home and out of the home) • Images of persons of various ages and abilities in the classroom

19. Materials • Books,Dolls, manipulatives -reflect diversity in gender roles, ethnic and cultural backgrounds, abilities and range of occupations • Present accurate information and images • Variety of parents and family roles • Different languages, Braille, sign • Art should have various colors-tan, brown, black, and variety of artwork should be shown from various artists-ethnically diverse, women, men etc. • Various forms of music and song from diverse cultures should be included

20. Holidays and Curriculum • Issues- Halloween-Witches and Healer • Evil and the Color Black • Christmas, Easter,Chanukah, Kwanzaa, Winter Solstice • Approaches to instruction • Include holidays from several cultural groups • Do not celebrate holidays and allow children to share what the did for breaks and mention similarities and difference

21. More on Lesson Planning • Equity • Relationships for parents student and teacher • Knowledge of various cultures • See and think from a multicultural perspective • Correct distortions of historic and scientific record • Improve society • Willingness to cross ethnic and cultural boundaries

22. Terms • Lesson plan- a plan of instruction for a single lesson • Instructional objective • Materials • Methods • Evaluation • Time • Origin

23. Ways to incorporate diversity into instruction • Lesson sequence- series of individual lessons( one lesson builds on another) • Instructional activity-integrated part of the lesson or an activity that can be the lesson itself (field trip; oral presentations, class meetings, programs) • Unit of instruction-comprehensive, multidimensional plan of learning