Holly Hutson
Business Education
Diversity and Multicultural Approaches
Diversity and Multicultural curriculum is a huge part of being an educator in today’s classroom. This deals with structuring curriculum to appeal to those with different educational backgrounds, primary language, genders, social class, race, and learning needs or disabilities. Because of the complexity of diversity, there are a variety of ways that that these differences can be addressed in the classroom. As a whole, I believe in taking the social action approach to changing curriculum. Meaning, transforming my curriculum to meet the needs of the various diverse learners in my classroom but also have my students do something to about it.
My goals in the classroom are to :
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Create a safe learning environment for ALL students.
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Increase my students awareness of global and social issues.
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Change my students’ stereotypes and prior knowledge of multicultural backgrounds to avoid prejudices in the classroom.
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Encourage critical thinking in my classroom.
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Call my students to action!
Some ways I plan to approach diversity in my curriculum include:
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Avoid using all Eurocentric, male-dominant material. When planning material, I want to avoid using all mainstream examples and figures. I want to include various opinions, figures, voices, and experiences from a variety of educational levels, backgrounds, and races. I want change students “stereotypes” they may have and produce a cohesive classroom that gives respect and understanding to many people from various walks of life. There are a variety of historical perspectives and I want my students to see the diversity in our nation.
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Supplement material with current events and news stories that are “out of the box” or beyond the textbook. Allow students to relate their learning to what they know to be true today. Encourage students to understand how our culture has changed over the years. Allow students to analyze social and global issues through pop media. I will also meet with peers to learn more about their backgrounds and get ideas for how to incorporate diversity in the curriculum.
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Address diversity in the workplace. Business education is a great class to begin talking about how businesses are integrating diversity in the workplace. Have students research diverse workplaces and possibly have a speaker from one of these workplaces visit our classroom.
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Address different learning needs. I design my curriculum to allow for diverse needs of students with different abilities. I adapt my lesson plans to ensure to meet the needs of ESL learners, students with IEP’s and 504 plans, groups of students with similar needs, and gifted learners. I do this through offering variations to assignments that help meet each student’s specific needs.
