Reflection On Sustain Diversity In Learning Environments (Essay Sample)

Reflective Essay
Name
Institution
Reflective Essay
The social and cultural structures of classrooms as well as learning environments are multifaceted and many times disregarded (Archer, 1990). Many teachers find it difficult to cope with a couple of students who come from the different cultural backgrounds. For a teacher, embracing mindfulness can unpack these social and cultural structures and make them clear. The article “Mindful Reflection as a Process for Developing Culturally Responsive Practices” by Barbara J. Dray and Debora Basier Wisneski outlines the significance of enhancing diversity in classrooms. Embracing mindful reflection and being culturally responsive helps to sustain diversity in learning environments.
Frames of references based on gender, class, language, location, race, and personal history affect teachers’ understandings of students. Such unique set of values, attitudes, experiences, and beliefs affect cultural diversity in the learning environment. Female students and male students use language differently while in school (Ferguson, 2003). The female students use the social communicative structures in language that make them avoid vulgar language or speaking loudly while expressing themselves. However, male students use vulgar language and talk loudly in their expressions (Ramsey, 2004). Female students have found to perform higher in verbal ability tasks than male students. However, male students appear to perform better in visual-spatial tasks than female students. Furthermore, Gender differences affects the why male and female students interact in school. Male students tend to be physically aggressive compared to female students. The population in the United states of America is composed of students from variety of cultures and ethic group. Cultural diversity is real, although for most aspects they have been constructed by the society. Dray and Wisneski (2011) argue that the African-American students have high chances of being suspended from school compared to their white peers. Also, chances of Latino students being expelled are higher comparing to their white peers (Dray & Wisneski, 2011). Furthermore, the authors present the argument that African-American students face disciplinary actions as a result of their “subjective” offenses like being disrespectful, loud, and loitering (Ferguson, 2003). On the contrary, white students only receive punishment for committing “objective” offenses: vandalism, smoking, cutting class, and using language that is obscene in school. Frequently, this results in unequal discipline and bias (Ramsey, 2004). Therefore, such practices based on racial preferences affect the ability to establish a learning environment that dutifully embraces cultural as well as individual differences.
For a teacher, cultural, gender, race, and other differences influence the ability to create a learning environment that is culturally responsive. Students from different cultural background experience culture shock and that may lead to depression, worry and fear, hence affecting ability to creating learning environment that includes all. Moreover, based on gender differences, male students are much more aggressive and disruptive than female students, therefore, a teacher may spend most of their controlling and keeping the male students quiet in learning environment that includes both male and female students. (Ramsey, 2004).
I can adopt mindful reflection and effective communication to incorporate students’ interests, abilities, linguistic and cultural backgrounds into the learning environments. Dray and Wisneski define “mindfulness” as a specific quality of attention under which an individual is present to all the experiences of the specific moment (Dray & Wisneski, 2011). Mindfulness creates space for alternative interpretations of student’s behavior and provides teachers with the chance to respond in a different way. Furthermore, effective communication would help me to pay close attention to student’s behaviors as well as my own conduct (Dray & Wisneski, 2011). This would enable me to avoid biased responses that are based on my cultural frames of references.
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