Multicultural education is becoming a huge topic for teachers with the increase of minority students into the schools. Schools are becoming more and more diverse each day and we need to be sure we can give these children equal opportunities to suceed.
Since we are all future educators and we understand that each and every child that comes to us will be of different backgrounds, cultures and ethnicities how do you feel about being prepared for all that will come your way? Do you feel that you are well prepared to handle multi-cultural students or does this scare you a little? How can we as teachers be ready to accomodate each child and be sure that no one falls through the cracks?

One of the most important things about multicultural education is that we are learning now and growing. There are always going to be things that we as teachers just don't have the time to include but if we keep a track of everything that we are learning it will become second nature to us.

I think that this issue is very important. Even in my own Learner Diversity class my teacher mention we need to tolerate differences. We are not teaching kids to TOLERATE differences. We need to accept and understand to better ourselves. I think as future teachers we need to be open-minded to all cultures.

Teaching students with a different background than my own really scares me. This is mainly because where I come from the schools were very non diverse as I was growing up. I hope to make these children feel welcome in my class and a part of it. I hope to educate the class on the diversity of the United States no matter how diverse my classroom students are, without singling out students. This is a big task for teachers and we all need to be very careful how we go about teaching.

I know I can relate to some students from other cultures in my classes. The only thing that truely worries me in this regard is my lack of foreign language skills when it come to Spanish, French, Arabic, etc. I cannot be the teacher that I know I am when I cannot commincate with my students in a productive, conversational fashion. It is something I think every teacher can work throughout their careers.

I feel that I am ready for the diversity that I will face when I begin to teach but that is because I come from a very diverse school. I went to high school with, whites, African Americans, Asians, and Hispanics. Even though I know there is always so much more to learn I still think this is a great advantage to me.

My background in schools has defiantly been non-diverse; and therefore I am a little apprehensive of teaching multicultural students. Trying to incorporate all the students’ differences into my class will be a challenge but even if the students do not share a common background, sharing an education would be a place to start.

We can't all be prepared to accomadate each student in the beginning, it takes time. There are so many different cultures that it's overwhelming to think of all the differences such as communication, backgrounds, cultural values, etc. Having students in your classroom from different backgrounds will only increase your knowledge about the many cultures that are within our society. It's very interesting and overwhelming; I think it could possibly be difficult especially as a new teacher but it'll be a great learning experience for us as teachers and our students.

To gain a better multicultural education, one must not only know about another culture, one must be willing to become engrossed in that culture to truly understand it. Most Americans do not understand American culture so it is difficult to try to teach about each and every culture. I also know this. In order for American society to function, the new students must gain an understanding of American education. So the street goes both ways, both the teacher and student must be willing to learn if multicultural education is to really work.

I also feel a little apprehensive about teaching to students from different backgrounds. I feel that a language barrier will be the hardest to deal with. I think this is one of the struggles we as teachers need to recognize. How can we do this? I think alot of experience and determination might be the best key.

I think this is where we can relate our lessons back to what students already experience in everyday life. I know in my music education classes, we are taught to convey every culture possible (which is a lot easier for classes such as fine arts, language arts, history, etc...). I think that we should have a general sense of the cultures we will encounter in today's classroom for the benefit of ourselves, our colleagues, and most importantly--- our students. One of my music instructors told me "Know what you're up against, if you don't understand them, they won't understand you."

In my opinion, If we can relate information back to students in a culturally diverse way then it will help to bring further success with the knowledge our future students can gain.

I personally have been involved with many people from different cultures, I feel like when it comes to understanding a good bit about many cultures, I am as prepared as a first year teacher can be, except when it comes to language differences. This is the only thing that worries me because I'm only fluent in English and I struggle in, what should be my master language, the Cherokee language. I also have limited, and I mean very limited ability in Spanish. I would like to try to learn Spanish better, seeing how that is most likely to be the foreign language that I would encounter, but that card isn't in my deck right now.

This is actually a topic that my Learner Diversity professor has tried to prepare my block with. Our class has been split up into pairs and each group has a population to research by finding appropriate children's literature and helpful teacher resources. I beleive the best way to educate students that come from different backgrounds and cultures is to research and make sure you understand how these children best learn. If you understand your students background, culture, and how they learn best, you will be more prepared and confident to teach them. I also think that it could be good for the entire class to learn about multicultural students backgrounds so the other class mates will realize that some students may have customs that are different from what they are used to.

I believe that we need to embrace each others cultures and expose children to differences in the classroom...especially if we are in a school system with very few variations in cultural backgrounds. It teaches children that difference is all right and even good. It teaches empathy and understanding and allows students to reflect on their own culture.
There is a great resource that everyone should check out-Teaching Tolerance (tolerance.org), it has lesson plans, activities, support...
Multiculturalism can be a great learning tool in our classroom.

I believe that multicultural education is very important but I do not think enough emphasis is put into it. Yes, we elementary education majors take the learner diversity class but in their we do not learn about the different cultures, we just talk about how we not make education very multicultural. So as a prospective teacher I believe that I am going to have to take it upon myself to educate myself on the many different cultures. For some reason I believe that some of these classes that we are taking are not directly getting us ready to teach but just complaining about what is going wrong with the school systems. There is never going to be a place where you teach that you are not going to experience different cultural backgrounds in your classroom.