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Reflective Essay: Diversity and Professional Practice

Master of Science, Walden University

EDUC-6616J: Enhancing Learning for Diverse Populations (Accelerating)

August 24, 2020

Reflective Essay: Diversity and Professional Practice

The diverse student population has gotten more predominant in the 21st-century classroom. Through this course experience, I have found out about the numerous duties required to enable these students to get equivalent access to instructive opportunities. As I considered the various predispositions, speculations, and convictions that influence the manner students from these contrasting cultural backgrounds are seen, it was evident to me that I had some genuine self-reflecting to do. Numerous parts constrained me to take a gander at how I show my students and fuse more associations with culture, ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, and many other areas that frequently fall prey to individual inclination, regardless of whether it is inadvertent.

I feel my convictions and personal demeanor about diversity had some impact in my classroom before taking this class; however, it prompted a more significant amount of an evasion attitude. In most cases, the points that surfaced that managed diversity revolved around random conversations; thus, like numerous different educators, I just evaded them. At the end when I pondered the statement from a past task that primarily expressed we fail as educators when we do not address predispositions in our classroom since it makes way for “relational and social clash” (Gorski and Pothini, 2018), it made me seek after another road of comprehension with respect to taking care of these circumstances. Presently I feel more enabled to stand up to a portion of the cultural issues and even consolidate a portion of them into the substance so my students can associate with a clear understanding of their disparities as opposed to utilizing their observations to reach inferences that are frequently established in partiality.

Furthermore, through this course, I have had the option to consider a wide range of parts of diversity corresponding to how I have to address it in my classroom. I was one of those educators who felt ill-equipped because of an absence of professional training I had gotten in making intends to address the issues of these students (Aceves and Orosco, 2014). Hence, I requested that my school have a professional learning class that manages explicitly how to join complex, cultural issues that emerge into our existing instructional plans by taking a gander at the substance instructed in each grade level. By looking forward to the content, I feel my school ought to be proactive in the areas where we will consolidate explicit cultural perspectives, so students are given a more fair view of the distinctions we as a whole offer. For instance, the English Language Learners (ELLs) I concentrated on all through this course have introduced various requirements corresponding to giving them equivalent access to the substance at a level they will make progress. I established this SMART objective concerning addressing the necessities of a particular gathering of middle school language learners: I intend to meet three days/week for an aggregate of about a month and a half with the five ELL seventh-grade students who at present have not aced the comprehension of formulating basic math formulas. We will concentrate unequivocally on looking into those aptitudes sets over that time and will be assessed weekly for data progression. Toward the finish of the month and a half, those five students will have the option to recognize the comprehension of formulating basic math formulas at a 90% rate.

My planning, instruction, and assessment must address all students' needs, with an accentuation on diverse students. This is apparent in Walden’s diversity proficiencies. This should be possible by accomplishing a comprehension of my students and recognizing any predispositions or biases just as my convictions and values can influence my communication with my students and their families in a negative manner (Laureate Education, 2016a). Thus, positive social change will be cultivated (Walden University, 2020) as I intend to make a change inside my educational setting. Consistently I am one bit nearer to setting up my school that centers around comprehensive instruction. Priority will be to

“educate to oppose the marks given to bright scholars who are exceptions” (Haney, 2014). In this setting, the word anomalies infer students with special needs, notwithstanding, with physical or scholarly incapacities, however all diverse students.

As I think about the codes of ethics that we found out about during this course, I am intensely mindful of how a significant number of my students have profound predispositions and numerous confusions to ethnic and racial disparity. In my grade level, we see many students who battle in their scholastics because of poor reading and math abilities. I might want to start an action research plan that centers around building the perception of students who are at least one grade level beneath their current grade in their comprehensive reading and math ranges of abilities. This action research project would bring unequivocal instructing, perception ability-based strategies/intercessions, and data assessment assembling all through to guarantee the procedures being utilized are compelling and intentional.

This course has helped me understand how essential it is to help students from culturally diverse backgrounds interface with the content. My goal is to take this information and make approaches to impart it to my colleagues and different schools, who may require a superior comprehension of how to address a portion of these equivalent issues. I must be eager to take the “passionate risk” and assess my inclinations, so I could be all the more successfully fair-minded in the manner I treated and showed my students (Dray and Wiseneski, 2011). To the exclusion of everything else, I feel straightforwardness with ourselves is the initial phase in making more fair learning conditions that lead to equal opportunities for the entirety of our students to prevail in the classroom.

References

Aceves, T.C., & Orosco, M.J. (2014). Culturally responsive teaching (Document No. IC-2). Retrieved from University of Florida, Collaboration for Effective Educator,

Development, Accountability, and Reform Center website:

http://ceedar.education.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/culturallyresponsive.pdf

Dray, B. J., & Wisneski, D. B. (2011). Mindful Reflection as a Process for Developing

Culturally Responsive Practices. Teaching Exceptional Children, 44(1) , 28–36.

Gorski, P.C., & Pothini, S.G. (2018). Case studies on diversity and social justice education

(2 nd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge.

Haney, M. J. (2014). Creating spaces that breathe hope. Why we teach now. pp. 103-111. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Laureate Education. (2016a). RWRCOEL diversity proficiencies. Walden University.

https://class.waldenu.edu

Walden University. (2020). Social Change. Retrieved from https://catalog.waldenu.edu/content.php?catoid=41&navoid=5182

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