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How can teachers prepare for diverse classrooms? There isn't a definitive answer, but there is a wealth of resources online. Discover some helpful links for teachers.

Photo credit: woodleywonderworks via flickr (CC BY 2.0)

How can teachers effectively engage students from diverse backgrounds? It's a question many teachers face, and of course, there isn't one prescribed strategy that works. Luckily, there are many useful resources to help new and veteran educators explore the subject.

If you're looking for a starting point, How Can We Prepare Teachers to Work With Culturally Diverse Students and Their Families? (an article from the Family Research Project at Harvard University) features insightful advice and useful tips from leading diversity education specialists. These researchers agree on the underlying message that communication plays an integral role; you'll also find insight into preparation and information about connecting with students and building relationships with families.

Resources for Multicultural Classrooms (Teaching Tolerance): Produced by The Southern Poverty Law Center, Teaching Tolerance's classroom resources page offers free lesson plans for exploring topics like race and ethnicity, gender equality, and sexual orientation with students. For specific teaching practices, start with Teaching Tolerance's Critical Practices for Anti-Bias Teaching, a self-paced, four-part, professional development learning program.

Awareness Activities (EdChange.org): The EdChange-produced Multicultural Pavilion is a wonderful assortment of resources for educators. This Awareness Activities collection provides plenty of engaging ideas and activities to introduce diversity at the beginning of the school year. Don't miss the Teacher's Corner for curriculum ideas, strategies, and much more.

Teaching Diverse Learners (Brown University): This website is "a resource dedicated to enhancing the capacity of teachers to work effectively and equitably with English-language learners (ELLs)." You'll find great practical teaching strategies, ideas for engaging elementary ELLs, and tips for reaching out to families.

Lesson Plans and Resources (Teaching for Change): Teaching for Change is a nonprofit, with a mission of providing "teachers and parents with the tools to create schools where students learn to read, write, and change the world." The site features thoughtful and engaging lesson plans, tips for addressing race and diversity in the class, and links to great teacher resources.

Lesson Plans and Resources for Multiculturalism and Diversity: Scholastic produced this collection of resources for teachers. Along with some engaging lesson plans, there are also plenty of articles featuring tips and strategies to help educators engage students and families from diverse backgrounds. Connect With Kids and Parents of Different Cultures is a great place to start.

Strategies for Teaching Culturally Diverse Students: This TeacherVision-produced article is full of useful and ready-to-use tips for welcoming and engaging diverse students. Discover more useful ideas and lesson plans in TeacherVision's Diversity Resources for Teachers collection.

Resource Library (Inclusive Schools Network): This library is rich with resources covering a range of topics on diversity, with a focus on creating equity for students with disabilities. Start with the Inclusion Basics, which provides a great overview of creating an inclusive classroom. The Culturally Responsive Teaching resource page offers great ideas, tips, and strategies for reaching culturally diverse students with disabilities. You can also dig deeper into subjects like assessment, collaboration, and working with families.

Two other sources of inspiration are Yvonne Pratt-Johnson's article Communicating Cross-Culturally: What Teachers Should Know and this book excerpt from ASCD's Diverse Teaching Strategies for Diverse Learners. In addition to these articles, here are a few other resources that will help educators develop inclusive learning environments and approach race, gender equality, empathy, and bullying prevention during class.

More From Edutopia

You'll find a trove of insightful articles on Edutopia. Check out the Culturally Responsive Teaching page for additional resources. Here are a few popular blog posts from Edutopia writers:

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Preparing for Cultural Diversity: Resources for Teachers

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How can teachers prepare for diverse classrooms? There isn't a definitive answer, but there is a wealth of resources online. Discover some helpful links for teachers. Photo credit: woodleywonderworks via flickr (CC BY 2.0) How can teachers effectively engage students from diverse backgrounds?

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Useful resources for teachers

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My Learning - free resources from arts, cultural and heritage organisations

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My Learning offers National Curriculum-linked resources for teachers and learners, inspired by the collections of arts, heritage and cultural organisations. Teachers can use resources both as stand-alone teaching aids and as planning tools to prepare for a visit. New resources are continually being added.

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Hello! My name is Evangelia Moula, I live in Rhodes, an island in South Aegean region of Greece and I am a language teacher. For the last 4 years I m responsible for the coordination of extracurricular innovative activities at the secondary schools of my region.This means that students, with their teachers' help and support collaborate voluntarily in order to learn, create, act or whatever they chose to do, in their free time.
Rhodes has always been a multicultural society, where different people lives and worked together harmoniously. Recently the refugee crisis has unsettled the previous situation and unfortunately phenomena of racism and nationalism emerge. So Education has to take seriously this fact into account and redirect itself towards interventions and programs that will mitigate,not to say eliminate the problem. The extra curricular activities are an ideal space for this. And, I m happy to see that more and more programs are culturally sensitive, that students' teams are almost always of mixed nationalities, that teachers do their best to promote equality and human rights. I m proud to collaborate with so many creative and multi culturally aware and responsive people, who contribute to the local society's well being and balance!

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What a beautiful world

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If the World Were a Village of 100 People: A Story About the World's People - Trailer

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Noone should feel ALONE!

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BEING DIFFERENT EQUALS BEING SPECIAL

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Can we benefit form the languages our students speak, even if we don’t understand them?

We can surely benefit by many different ways. We could look for the words’ etymology. Sometimes its surprising to find the common roots that exist among different languages. Bu even if there are no common roots on the words is reflected people’s mentality and worldview. So we can better understand each other this way. We can look for proverbs or idioms to find the many ways people express themselves in order to say the same thing.Diversity is cultural wealth! We must take advantage!

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We have to fight to make everybody embrace cultural diversity because nationalism and racism is getting more aggressive and becomes more and more popular among europeans. Its dangerous and repulsive. We are all responsible not to let these feelings erode school communities.

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Developing
empathy & open-mindedness    

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Developing
empathy & open-mindedness    

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I was really astonished to see that an idea I had used by myself, having adapted a learning material form Actionaid about water, to my own aims, is already in use and is also suggested as a proper way to develop empathy. I have already my own role cards, which I use with my students or educators (when I conduct such a seminar). I think its a very well aimed activity and Im glad its being shared here.

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Creating a sense of belonging and identity in your class and school

I have tried - in a minimal scale of course- to decorate the classroom in a way that reflects all cultures included in order to create a friendly environment. I also pair students in order to a native speaker help the foreigner through the difficulties he faces with language. Involving parents is also something i try but not always with success

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Example activities to develop students' intercultural competence. 

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Example activities to develop students' intercultural competence. 

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Supporting students with different first languages   I find the activity of presenting different personalities from other countries is quite exciting because students usually have a vague or a completely no idea at all about other countries. Being attached to their own national environment they ignore life in other places, apart from the commercial, stars (actors, singers). So its enlightening to find out that there is intellectual life in other places too.

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Understanding different models of living & working together in culturally diverse communities

In Greece since there are still strong resistant forces, who claim our national superiority, the model of co- existence is dominant. Our society makes serious efforts to overcome stereotypes, but is not ready yet for the humanistic model

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Developing interculural competences with my students

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Developing interculural competences with my students

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Working together, take advantage of everybody's skills, use experiential learning techniques, make students collaborate, give them voice and space all of these are permanent challenges if a teacher aims to develop intercultural competences to her/his students. The most difficult is to overcome their prejudices and make them work together...

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Since in Rhodes, Greek Orthodox live together with Greek Muslims, who have lived in Rhodes for more than a 100 years, there is an issue of different cultural identities. Although we mainly live harmoniously without serious problems, orthodox identity is dominant, so it is of primary importance to show students that both identities are equally accepted and that our differences are trivial, or eves more that we share common features that are stronger than our differences. So I choose excerpts from a novel called The life of Ismael Ferik Pasa by Rea Galanaki

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You have to take into account many factors, otherwise your effort will be no more than a firework, sparkling for a while, but without permanent Impact. Language and pedagogy may be sine qua non, but the social profile of the students, parents' involvement, whole acceptance, use of diverse materials, cross-curricular interventions, a network of social interrelations and so on, all seem to be equally important

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Developing intercultural competence as a teacher

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Developing intercultural competence as a teacher

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Everybody knows that Greece is facing an immigration crisis the last years, especially since the war in Syria started. Thousands of people, persecuted mainly by war, reach out greek coasts dreaming to take refuge and be integrated, safe away from their countries. Greek education has to correspond to their needs, to embrace them and give them the best possible, in order to alleviate their drama and help them cope with the new circumstances. I feel obliged, more than ever, to be able to face these people and help them through. First important step to my opinion is to cultivate cultural diversity standards to Greek students and create a friendly learning community for the immigrants.