Diverse Classroom & Peer-feedback Activity (Chapter 8)

As what I talked about in the response of chapter 6, diverse classroom is a big challenge for teachers in the United States. According to many researches on sociolinguistics, what causes the difficulties for minority students is mostly their different preschool education or variable cultural backgrounds. Therefore they have different ways to approach literacy, structure the world, and make meanings out of symbols. For example, African American children tend to use topic-associated style while white children prefer topic-centered style. Then these differences result in their difficulties with studies since the current curriculum is designed mainly for white children. However, many teachers do not recognize this factor and still hold bias toward these students of lower socioeconomic status or culturally minority groups. They have lower expectations and choose the teaching methods of drilling and practice even with computers.

So in my opinion, it is very important for teachers to first understand each student’s cultural background and how it influences his or her learning patterns. Also it is teachers’ responsibility to let students learn to respect others and value diverse cultures. In collaborative communities, teachers should provide more opportunities for minority students to show their expertise and teach dominant ones. Moreover, virtual community is another good way. With the internet and cyberspace, students can meet people all around the world and contribute their knowledge to finish a share project, which creates a sense of belonging. In this way, teachers open doors for students and introduce the world to them, which broadens their horizon. Students will understand the beauty of diversity and gradually discard their prejudice under teachers’ guidance.

As for the peer feedback activities proposed by Harries, I have heard about a similar teaching experience. A senior high school teacher set up a blog for writing practice. She found a girls’ class in another school and a boys’ class in her school and divided all of them into several groups. The teacher assigned an opening of a story and the members of each group took turns finishing the story. After that, students could give feedbacks to all the postings so that each group discussed how they could revise the story based on the comments. Finally, the teachers arranged a real meeting for the two classes to present their final stories and vote for the winner. This writing community helped students to compare each other’s performance and have chances to reflect on theirs. Also they cooperated together to achieve the same goal and contributed to the success of the team.