Preparing to teach culturally diverse classrooms

Changing classroom demographics means teachers must be prepared to understand and work with children from cultures other than their own. With about 20% of school-age children speaking a language other than English at home, teachers must be ready to address the needs of a culturally diverse population. Most current teachers have little intercultural experience, which means that schools have a tremendous gap to fill (Cushner, McClelland, & Safford, 2000; Melnick & Zeichner, 1998).

Teacher preparation programs can help fill that gap by ensuring that students are exposed to more cultural opportunities before they leave campus. The School of Education at the University of North Carolina (UNC) has taken this challenge seriously and created a student-teaching abroad program designed to expand preservice teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge by exposing them to strategies used in China. After completing 10 weeks of full-time student teaching in the U.S., students travel to China for four more weeks of being immersed in another culture. So far, 23 UNC students have completed this program with more scheduled to travel in spring 2014.

“I had to embrace the fact that I felt constantly lost, confused, and out of place.”