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I believe teaching for diversity is imperative, and it is a great unit for every teaching practitioner. It is definitely even more important as we live in such a multicultural society, and there will typically always be diversity within a classroom. It is also important as the unit acknowledges diversity as whole, not just cultural diversity. Teachers are faced with diversity amongst their students, relating to their abilities and learning skills.

I have decided to include these artefacts as they have affected me and interested me the most through this unit. These artefacts have made me think and reflect on my own beliefs and thoughts about diversity within schools and in general. These artefacts I think best reflected to my interpretation of the unit, and how diversity affects me. Many of these artefacts have made me emotional, and often think about how I would deal with that as a teacher. I have included many drawings of my interpretations of videos we have watched in seminars, a flyer to promote Harmony Day within a school, and a letter to my future self as how I would like to be as a teacher.

Ultimately, I think diversity is an extremely important and significant concept with teaching. These artefacts have helped me relate emotionally to the content of this unit and helped me gain a greater understanding.

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What concept in the title of this unit 'Teaching for Diversity' is the most significant? 

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What concept in the title of this unit 'Teaching for Diversity' is the most significant? 

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I believe that the concept of diversity is the most significant from the title of the unit, it is what defines the unit and sets it apart from other teaching units. Diversity is the focus of the unit. Although 'teaching' and 'for' are also important, diversity defines what kind of teaching practice one will undertake. I think the concept of diversity is extremely important due to the multicultural society that we live in. It is important to be aware and respectful of the diversity within the classroom. However, it is also important to acknowledge that that diversity entails more than different cultures, but disabilities, learning abilities etc. Diversity is important for everyone, but especially for teachers.

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In a seminar we watched a video that was an advertisement for Western Sydney University. The advertisement detailed the story of Deng Adut, a child soldier that then became a defence lawyer. This artefact is a drawing of parts of the video I found interesting and important to his story.

The reason I chose to use this artefact is because I thought this was a great video, it was extremely motivational and I thought everyone could get something out of it and learn from his story. It showed that anything could be possible if you put your mind to it.

From a perspective of teaching for diversity, I thought it was great to show that education is often a privilege for others. Deng was forced to be a child soldier, he wasn't able to go to school and because of this he had to teach himself how to read at age 15. It also shows how students that are new migrants or refugees are often disadvantaged in schools.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buA3tsGnp2s

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In a seminar the tutor showed the class a video of the Privilege Walk, he said that he decided for the class not to do it and asked the students to think if his decision was the correct decision.

The Privilege Walk shows how privilege differs amongst different people and how it affects our lives even when we often do not know it is. There are lines marked on the ground. Everyone starts at the same point, typically in the middle so participants are able to take steps forward and back. Questions are then asked related to privilege, questions usually are about sexuality, safety, gender etc. At the end of the activity participants are typically at different lines across the room, exposing the different levels of privilege.

After watching the video, I personally believed it was a good decision to not do the activity in the class as it was only the first weeks of the semester and students may have not felt comfortable with such confronting questions. I believe this activity requires a lot of trust between the participants.

I found this activity very interesting because privilege can often be overlooked and one can gain privilege from things that may be mundane to them. As I said with the artefact from Deng's story, it has become clear to me that education is a privilege. From a teacher's perspective, this privilege walk shows how many aspects of a student's life can often set them back or even in front of other students. It also further exemplified how diverse a room of students can be and how there might be extraneous variables amongst a student's life that is affecting their learning. Privilege in a classroom can also relate to previous knowledge of students', as some students may have already learned a topic previously in another year, while another student may have not. The difficulty is trying to get students to be on a mutual level in relation to their knowledge of a particular subject. Privilege within a classroom can relate to a range of things.

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Harmony day is a day is an annual celebration that is celebrated on the 21st of March to celebrate the diverse cultures within Australia.

This artefact is a flyer for an that I have come up with that I think may help celebrate harmony day and promote diversity in schools.

I think it would be a great idea for a year level to have something similar to a 'Science Fair' that they have in the US, where students create a project that illustrates what diversity and harmony day is to them, what it means to them, and why it is important.

I think this is a good idea because it gets the students involved, and everyone may have different interpretations on the term diversity. Diversity can impact everyone differently and can have different meanings.

(Once you have clicked on the picture, double click on it to see it entirely)

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In this artefact we were asked to draw our perceptions of a 'normal' dog, the 'normal' alphabet and a 'normal' baby.

Majority of students all had the same drawings and alphabet. For the dogs they all had 2 eyes, ears, a tail and paws. However, it was then apparent to the class during discussion that dogs can be still dogs without a tail, or if it were to look different. This is similar to the drawing of the 'normal' baby, all had 2 eyes and were not physically disabled. The same idea with the dog can be transferred to the baby, a human is still a human if they don't have all their limbs, eyes etc. For the alphabet, all students wrote down the English alphabet, even though a few spoke another language.

Our perception of what is normal is fixed and stagnant, even though many of us know that a dog can be a dog without a tail and a human can be a human with one arm. We are not born knowing what normal depicts, we are taught that and acquire our depictions of normal as we grow. I believe normal is such a restrictive term, especially after this activity, I thought about how it could be offensive and how some people may think they do not live up to the social standards.

In regards for teaching for diversity, I think it is imperative to not have a fixed perception of what normal is, and not put students against these standards. Especially with the normal alphabet, the English alphabet is what is used in our education system but it should be acknowledged that there are an abundant amount of students where English is not their primary language and thus, the English alphabet isn't their primary alphabet or their 'normal' alphabet. Having a fixed perception on what is normal is not effective as a teacher,  since students are so diverse. Categorising students is detrimental.