Teaching Culturally Diverse Classrooms
America now is a very culturally diverse nation; most of the minority and immigrant population lives in cities, which indicates that the public school classrooms in urban areas are full of versatile cultural identities. According to the 2000 Census record, minority and immigrant populations has grown in increasing numbers, and most of those people live in urban areas and attend public high schools; also, the level of residential segregation still remains as high as in 1990, which proposes new problems for immigrants and minorities. Monocultural schools are very rare and the global society is very multicultural; it is very logical to prepare students in schools to enter this diverse society (Le Roux 48). Teachers are largely responsible for what and how students learn. It is important to educate and establish respect in students by helping them become aware of the cultural and ethnic diversity that exists in the United States so that they are prepared for the real world, after school. "The imbalance between the racial/ethnic population become more disproportionate and the composition of the teaching force remains predominantly white, middle class, female"(qtd in Growe 208). Teachers are not adequately prepared to educate culturally diverse public classrooms in urban areas due to their monolingualism, cultural homogeneity, and the lack of knowledge, respect, and awareness of languages, cultural differences, and different human beings.
The U.S. Department of Education found out that 38.8 percent of public school students were minorities. Eighty percent of the teachers surveyed felt unprepared to teach a diverse student population. Teachers do not understand the psychology of a student and what the student experiences within the boundaries of his or her culture, so generally they focus on the external behavior and are forced to impose punishments following the regulation (Holloway 90). Research has been conducted and the study showed that, "Latino...
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