Below is a sample of original work I've created as part of my Early Childhood Education Studies.
Promoting Diversity in the Classroom
Project Ask:
Create an activity or event (either virtual or in-person) that would encourage children to embrace cultural diversity in their classroom.
Objectives:
- To create a classroom environment where everyone feels safe and welcomed as they are
- To promote cultural diversity and a worldly, open-minded mentality towards other cultures
Personal Reflection
I chose to create my event as a bigger, school-wide initiative instead of an activity just within my
class because I really loved the idea of creating a way to incorporate deeper diversity learning
year-round for everyone. A school-wide initiative like this would also showcase the school’s
commitment to ongoing diversity teaching and allow students a more immersive experience,
rather than just a surface one-off activity about different cultural foods, or “cultural tourism” as
one paper I read called it.
In my experience working within asian cultures (South Korea, Thailand), children and adults are not used to seeing many foreign faces, and definitely hold a number of explicit biases towards other cultures, which they openly pass along to their kids. Building up an understanding and compassion for other cultures doesn’t seem like a priority in overwhelmingly monolithic countries, and can be difficult to teach beyond the basic cultural
differences such as food and clothing, because the students simply cannot relate. However, we know that in today’s world it is imperative that children learn understanding and tolerance if they want to be successful global citizens with maximum opportunities available to them.
Hosting a program such as the one proposed will provide students of every age (even as young as
Pre-K) many memorable learning moments, excitement, and of course the opportunity to get to
know (and directly relate to) children just like them, from across the globe.
- Mina Tzenova
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