PID 3260 Week 4 Post- Teaching in Diverse Classrooms..

Teaching in Diverse Classrooms:
This topic comes up frequently in an urban center college in a very multi-cultural city.
When teaching the Communication Skills for Health Care Professionals there are multiple opportunities to look at this topic and for students to experiment with communication techniques that they wouldn't normally for either personality reasons or cultural reasons.  We talk about diversity in general and about the pros and cons of living in such a diverse setting.  This discussion is usually very well participated in.  Then I show a video of assumptions that makes everyone laugh. (see below).   After setting the stage myself setting parameters and expectations I then share an example of a communication technique I'm not particularly skilled at. I also share the history and the steps and practice that I undertook to change that.  Then I have the students pull a technique out of a hat and work in 3-4 to role play a situation where that role would be THE one to use.   I've found that small groups are the key  (with the occasional class of boisterous extroverts).  It allows practice with an audience of peers  but a small one.
When discussing an issue where there is a wide range of ethnicities or cultures or ages or gender... I tend to ask "and how else could this issue be viewed"?   OR " is there another way of seeing this?"
OR  " if you were  X, would you see it like this? "
As Brookfield states on pg 170  "Diversity can never be fully addressed to the satisfaction of all involved. There are just too many variables...etc.  However he then goes on to say that if our purpose is to help students learn, we need to recognize that we are teaching in increasingly diverse classrooms and be willing to constantly vary our activities in response to that variable influencing the learning experience.
Enjoy the where are you from vide....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUO59Emi3eo&list=PL-BnrTdQ15sZKgA7bkatLqIbwmn1TOde5