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This is an article by Matthew Lynch who is an educational consultant. This article has six ways teachers can implement culture awareness in their curriculum. 

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This is an article by Matthew Lynch who is an educational consultant. This article has six ways teachers can implement culture awareness in their curriculum. 

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Reference:
Lynch, Matthew. (November 30th, 2014.) 6 Ways teachers can foster cultural awareness in the classroom. Education Week. https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/opinion-6-ways-teachers-can-foster-cultural-awareness-in-the-classroom/2014/11

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6 Ways Teachers Can Foster Cultural Awareness in the Classroom (Opinion)

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Schools that acknowledge the diversity of their student population understand the importance of promoting cultural awareness.

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How you can implement this in your classroom!

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How you can implement this in your classroom!

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One of the ways the article suggests to implement cultural awareness in the classroom is recognizing the ethnic backgrounds of your students. Create a safe space for students to show and express their culture and ethic diversities in a positive way. One lesson that can be used is to create a research project during a holiday and have students research what different countries do to celebrate that certain holiday. Students can share with each other and present on their findings!

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This article goes through ways to address socioeconomic gaps that may occur in your classroom. It goes through what to do to make students feel included, challenged, and accepted among their peers. 

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This article goes through ways to address socioeconomic gaps that may occur in your classroom. It goes through what to do to make students feel included, challenged, and accepted among their peers. 

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Reference:
Hayes, Jessica. (September 18th, 2019). 5 Ways teachers can address socioeconomic gaps in the classroom. Social Studies. https://www.socialstudies.com/blog/5-ways-teachers-can-address-the-poverty-gap-in-the-classroom/

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5 Ways Teachers Can Address Socioeconomic Gaps in the Classroom - Social Studies

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For my first permanent teaching position, I was lucky enough to fill a history position at a small K-8 school in a rural community.

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Ways to support diversity in the classroom by defining what it looks like in the classroom and why it's important. This article also goes through the benefits of being aware of the diversity in the classroom.

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Ways to support diversity in the classroom by defining what it looks like in the classroom and why it's important. This article also goes through the benefits of being aware of the diversity in the classroom.

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Reference:
Kampen, Maria. (n.d.). 7 Ways to support diversity in the classroom [with examples]. Prodigy. https://www.prodigygame.com/main-en/blog/diversity-in-the-classroom/#:~:text=What%20is%20diversity%20in%20the,religious%20belief%2C%20or%20political%20conviction.

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7 Ways to Support Diversity in the Classroom [With Examples]

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Promoting a school culture that values diversity in the classroom will benefit your students for the rest of their lives — here’s how to get started.

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An article which shines the importance of teaching students and not just lessons. A supportive learning environment is more about the relationships you have with your students rather than the physical environment.  

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An article which shines the importance of teaching students and not just lessons. A supportive learning environment is more about the relationships you have with your students rather than the physical environment.  

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Reference:

Crown. (September 14th, 2020). Supportive learning environment. TKI. https://seniorsecondary.tki.org.nz/English/Pedagogy/Supportive-learning-environment#:~:text=A%20supportive%20learning%20environment%20is,valued%2C%20included%2C%20and%20empowered.

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A supportive learning environment is less about the physical classroom and resources (though these are important) than it is about values and relationships.

In a genuinely supportive learning environment, every student feels valued, included, and empowered.

For this to happen, each student needs to know that their story matters. For teachers, this means listening, and taking the time and appropriate opportunities to learn:

where their students have come from

where they are now

where they want to head in the future.

Effective teachers do not teach lessons; they teach students.

Decisions relating to programme design, texts, resources, and contexts are made on the basis of sound knowledge about the students in the class: knowledge about their students' linguistic background, their ethnicity, their turangawaewae, the expectations of their parents and whānau, their hobbies, their skills, their prior learning and so on. These factors all contribute to the formation of each student's identity - who they are and how they see themselves.

Finding out about your students is just part of the broad inquiry cycle that also involves consciously planning and implementing programmes of learning that are designed specifically for them. The resources you use will be selected as part of this same inquiry.

At the start of the school year

Here are some steps you could take at the start of a new school year to begin to create a supportive learning environment:

Creating a learner profile

Start building a learner profile (paper based or digital) for each student. In it, you might keep track of:

English curriculum progress (See, for example, progression in ideas)

key competencies progress

the student's learning goals.

How could you and your students update these during the year? How could your students share their profiles with their families?

Enabling eLearning: ePortfolios
Learn about e-portfolios. You may be able to create an e-portfolio using your school's Learning Management System or LMS (for example, Knowledge Net, Moodle, Ultranet). Encourage your students to individualise their portfolios; for example, by linking comments or work to a music video to track or illustrate a particular learning episode.

Building relationships with your students

How might you go about building relationships with your students that will communicate your belief that all students have the capacity to be learners and achievers?

Are there ways in which you and your students could introduce yourselves, sharing who you are, where you are from, your likes, dislikes, and hopes and dreams for the future? Could you do this orally through, for example, a mihimihi or talanoa?

What about bringing or creating and sharing visual stories, collages, or artifacts? Could your students make, for example, mind maps, mosaics, tapa, korowai, siapo, taniko, tivaevae, pounamu design, or coat of arms?

Could you ask your students to share their role models, and what sort of person they aspire to be? Who do they look up to in their community? What are their strengths and needs? What are they passionate about (it may not be English!)? How could you use this information to make English learning relevant for your students?

Can you use your students' personal reading or viewing to recognise and affirm their sense of identity and belonging?

Building relationships between students

How could you build relationships between students so they feel safe and valued?

Challenge students with an unfamiliar text that is open to different interpretations. Discuss possible meanings, accept all responses, and encourage students. How can you acknowledge, respect, and value their voice?

Could you use your school's Learning Management System to create a discussion forum (for example, what feature film should we study this year)? How might you engage students in responding to each other's posts?

Do you have strategies that will allow students to get to get to know each other and you?

From such activities, collate information about your students' writing, speaking, and presenting skills.

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Supportive learning environment / Pedagogy / English / Home - Senior Secondary

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A supportive learning environment is less about the physical classroom and resources (though these are important) than it is about values and relationships. In a genuinely supportive learning environment, every student feels valued, included, and empowered. For this to happen, each student needs to know that their story matters.

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A big part of addressing socioeconomic gaps is to know your students. Knowing your students is important because you will be able to teach to their needs rather than to the curriculum. If you are assigning a research project for students to work on at home, you mustn't assume everyone has access to the internet. If you have a project where your students have to build something, you mustn't assume they have all the materials at home or have ways to get them. A way to address this is by allowing blocks of time for students to work on their research with the school wifi, or send students home with all the materials they might need to build their project. This will ensure student inclusion and improve academic performace!

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"Diversity in the classroom builds critical thinkers"

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"Diversity in the classroom builds critical thinkers"

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The article goes through explaining how being socially aware of each others differences can help draw out stronger conclusions in problem solving. This in turn increases student academic outcomes. A way to support this in your class is by checking your classroom materials. For example, most STEM lessons involve a story or read-aloud. See if these narratives are missing any voices that regard gender, ethnicity, race, and or equality. You can change the stories to involve a variety of different peoples that can reflect and educate your students. Students will light up when they see representation of people like them in famous stories!

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A positive and supportive learning environment is more about student relationships with the instructor and their classmates rather than the physical environment. This begins at the very beginning of the year, but can always be improved and worked on throughout! A good way to focus on the relationships between the class is to have at least one big class meeting each day. For example, a Morning Meeting. This meeting can be as simple as 10 minutes to help students talk openly about social emotional topics and to set the schedule for the day. Students and teachers will learn more about each other each and every day. If this is something you can't do right in the morning, you can adjust the time for any time of the day to gather together for a class check in!

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This blog goes over the importance of civic engagement for students. It increases student knowledge and promotes community action. 

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This blog goes over the importance of civic engagement for students. It increases student knowledge and promotes community action. 

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Resource:
Listenwise. (June 25th, 2021). Promoting civic engagement with your students. ListenwiseBLOG. https://blog.listenwise.com/2018/10/promoting-civic-engagement-with-your-students/

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Teaching civic engagement increases students' emotional intelligence and motivates them toward conscientious community action (Bernacki and Jaeger 2008). Research shows students who participate in civic engagement gain interpersonal effectiveness, the ability to collaborate across diverse perspectives, and a sense of self-efficacy for positively impacting individuals, organizations, and communities. How can teachers bring civic engagement to the classroom and build understanding of what it means to be an active participant in American democracy?

Educational podcasts can help to promote critical thinking and civic engagement in your classroom. Teaching with Listenwise can help students learn about civic participation, deepen their understanding of civic issues, and inspire civic action.

Teaching about civic participation
Compelling stories on democratic principles, processes, and structures core to U.S. citizenship can teach students about what civic engagement entails and how it plays out in everyday America.
Key to informed, responsible citizenship is understanding how our democracy functions. Engaging audio stories can help students learn about important civics topics such as the Separation of Powers , the role of the Electoral College , and Gerrymandering in Politics .

The upcoming election presents an excellent opportunity to help students fully understand the importance of exercising one of the most critical rights of citizenship-voting. Students can listen to podcasts to learn about the History of Voting Rights , as well as Why Many Americans Don't Vote and how Campaigns to Fight Election Disinformation are needed in the face of evidence that foreign governments are trying to influence the election.

Deepening understanding of civic issues
Inviting students to think critically and empathically about a variety of contemporary issues and diverse perspectives featured in current events can help to prepare them for active citizenship.
Podcasts can be integrated into lessons that invite students to think critically about relevant contemporary issues such as whether whether the voting age should be lowered , whether students should have a legal right to literacy , or whether mosquitoes should be genetically modified to self-destruct . They can be motivated to think about their roles and responsibilities as citizens, including their role in being critical consumers of social media , and potentially be encouraged to effect positive change in the world by learning from examples, such as NFL players speaking out publicly about issues that matter to them .

Through discussion, debate, writing, and other learning activities in response to those stories, students can deepen their understanding of the issues while sharpening their critical thinking and literacy skills. Our Listenwise Friday debate series is especially well-suited for this purpose. Just search "debate" to find a list of these stories.

Inspiring civic action
Featured stories about individuals who have taken action to make a positive difference in their communities can provide models that spark students' own ideas about what they can do to improve the world around them.
Lessons incorporating podcasts can engage students in considering issues that might affect them, such as , and how they can take action to address those issues. They might act at the local level, for example, to protect the environment by creating urban habitats for monarch butterflies . They might learn about students engaging in national efforts, such as protesting gun violence , or global efforts, such as influencing the straw debate . Stories like The Hate U Give and the Call to Activism can provide fodder for discussion of complex social issues that touch the lives of many students. The immediacy and emotional texture of people's voices can add resonance to their stories, so audio is especially well suited to generating responses that move listeners to action. Listenwise stories feature many examples of people making positive change.

The Listenwise platform incorporates a variety of digital tools to support comprehension, thus including learners at a range of literacy levels in thinking critically about rich, timely stories focused on issues that matter. In addition to using the listening comprehension and discussion questions accompanying each story, as well as the instructional activities and supports provided in lessons, you might be interested in the teaching resources included below. Please let us know if you find any of them useful and/or share others in comments.
Additional Resources Related to Promoting Civic Engagement

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Promoting Civic Engagement with Your Students - Listenwise Blog

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Teaching civic engagement increases students' emotional intelligence and motivates them toward conscientious community action (Bernacki and Jaeger 2008). Research shows students who participate in civic engagement gain interpersonal effectiveness, the ability to collaborate across diverse perspectives, and a sense of self-efficacy for positively impacting individuals, organizations, and communities.

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To promote student civic action is to understand the importance their thoughts and voices have on their community. A way to do this, is to hold a Class President Election. Students can run and support their campaigns, make speeches, listen to the people, and help delegate classroom policies! Students will vote and see how peoples words and actions can effect their community.