Today we will talk about Cross-Cultural Students in the Classroom. How we as Teachers can conduct a class with a variety of cultural backgrounds? How can we use the differences in our favor? How can we anticipate some possible barriers/issues?
As we go deeper in this discussion, I want to invite you to read my opinion regarding Cultural issues such as Paradigm, Differences Concerning Time, Miscommunication, and so on, as you can find here in this blog. All of those mentioned topics help us to answer my initial questions. You see, I am deeply passionate about music. When I was younger, I used to sleep listening to a cassette from the Tabernacle Choir. And when I was listening, I was supposed to be the conductor. It always impressed me how one single person can produce such a difference in the interpretation of music! For a non-music-taught person, it seems that the conductor is just making movements with their arms. But for a music-taught person, each movement has a meaning. Those movements and facial expressions are literally conducting the music a little faster, or more intensive. When are some moments when the orchestra needs to be very soft and give "space" to the choir, and vice-versa. And for my passionate eyes, that is the beauty in this! This is I was always supposed to be the conductor.
Allow me to continue to compare us with the orchestra and choir. In class, we are the conductors. But if the conductor doesn't know how to apply the musical rules of the sheet music, and how to get the best from each instrument and vocal cord, his/her position will be useless. We need to be sincere in our efforts to know each student. It will be helpful maybe to have some notes about each one of them. We often check these notes when preparing a lesson. How can I better use the students that are like the violins? They are natural leaders, and their presence is notable in the class. Some are most likely wind instruments. The way we conduct them can produce harmony and melody or can cause a mess in the class. And finally, we have the students who are most likely percussion instruments. Sometimes they are pretty quiet and don't like to share their opinions often, but when they do it, they always can add strong critical thinking.
This is a Herculean task for us Teachers, but getting to know each student, understanding their cultural background, what are their paradigms, what in their culture have the potential to produce miscommunication, and so on, and balance all this. This is the difference between producing a huge noise to producing music. Understanding their qualities and background can help us to get the best of each one, even if they are different as the music instruments are, they can produce music in our class.
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