As current or future educators, we need to, if not already, understand that we live in a culturally diverse world and country, and we work in a culturally diverse community.
I wish I could say that I work at a program and was able to experience how teachers implemented Culturally Responsive Curriculum in the class. Through my experience of doing my practicums in the past two years, there was only one where they involved different cultures into the classroom. They had charts of words translated in different languages so students could use and teach each other. Though the class had a set curriculum, they were still able to incorporate different cultures into the lesson by allowing children and their families to input into the lesson. Giving children projects/activities to do with their family to involve in the learning. Allowing families to participate in the curriculum allows the child's real life to connect with it. This also allows us to build bridges of meaningfulness between home and school experiences, between curriculum and social reality.
In the different centers, the teachers have incorporated various cultures. Having realistic and multicultural dolls, activities, and even the labels on the shelves and equipment in the classroom. It doesn't stop after a one day, one week, or a month, it is within the classroom for the whole year. Allowing to the children to be able to honor each others' as well as their own culture in their every day lives. Even in the library corner, there are book about children from many places of the world. Sometimes the children are able to reflect and relate to the characters in the book and find differences.
In the future, I hope to be able to work for a school that is able to honor the children and their backgrounds. Not having just visiting it once, but having it a part of the classroom everyday for children to be able to visit whenever they want to. Just as we have various types of family dynamics, we also have families with different cultures from our own.
