Diversity and Multicultural Education

The world is constructed on the diversity of a people thereby reflecting on the a number aspects of life that consist of the basic need of schooling in a conducive environment. A multicultural environment provides a platform for interaction, sharing and gaining knowledge of building understanding and conversation skills across cultures.
This paper delves into the range and multicultural education but with a bias in the placing of schools in New York City. Schools are a great platform for the improvement of students from multicultural spaces to develop, which is solely possible if only the integral foundation is put in place thru programs and policies.
Schools experience rapid shift in the number of students with diversity providing a vibrant opportunity to explore and celebrate a people’s diversity though this is hit by uncertainties when teachers, parents and administrators take this as a setback to the institutions.

There is need to embrace the changing environment by not pretending, carrying out activities in the usual way but rather adopt measures that factors in all the new differences in the system which is engaging in a vigorous, ongoing, and systemic development to pave way to the educators in the institution to function efficiently in a vastly diverse setting.

Change is inevitable, this plays out so well in the education system in New York where diversity-enhanced institutions have set out measures such as observing and collaborating with students from diverse and multicultural societies thereby transforming and serving all students well.

Multicultural education is not just towards the provision of further language, but with proper planning and support from schools it is rewarding where awareness is raised about other and one’s culture, endorsing diversity as a positive learning experience, setting teachers and students’ intercultural understanding.

Advancement pushes us beyond limits. It makes people negate restrictions, myths and goals to achieve the goal. Differences commands work, determination, sincerity, and understanding. Teachers who tackle these differences and factor them in the curriculum are bound to achieve in creating a multicultural classroom that will advance the educational goals of all students.

This piece of writing looks at two schools in New York City Ridgeways Schools at the White Plains and Rudolf Steiner on 15 East 79th Street to help dissect the diversity and multicultural education in the city.

Ridgeways School at the White Plains is a public school that produces an above average performance with an almost average yearly improvement. The institution has a diverse composition of students with a fair environment for the interaction with a great staff of teachers that run the academic calendar.

The school provides a great feel of community which brings a likeable sense of belonging making it easy for co-existence between the staff, students allowing a free development and appreciation of diversity in people promoting multicultural education.

According to the Ridgeway School the student diversity is as shown below.

Rudolf Steiner School on 15 East 79th Street, New York, NY 10075, is my second research school which is a private school with a definitely better setting than the previous one, Ridgeways. The institution has great infrastructure giving it an edge over the others in the region, with an amazingly designed curriculum that largely roots for understanding, appreciation and respect for the various cultures around the world.

It is a nice step to have a program that allows for the learning of various languages with an alternative of experiencing a real culture through exchange programs to oversees to other campuses of the school just giving purpose to life, community and celebrating a common humanity.

The two schools provide the space to share, celebrate diversity which is made possible by a supporting staff though Rudolf Steiner School has a better structure and policy which ensures the students embraces diverse and the multicultural education. Ridgeways school gets setbacks because of not having a detailed program and policy working towards appreciating various cultures with a further problem of not having full support of the staff who are teachers supposed to support the process but rather take it negatively frustrating the goal. A chat with a senior teacher reveals that students from various culture feel that some teachers don’t play their part to bridge the gap in the cultures thus exposing them to discrimination. Parents who hold contrary opinions also hurt the acceptance of the differences.

From this report, I appreciate the differences in people’s cultures with a keen interest in a school setting which offers an environment that can be used to ensure inclusivity of all cultures shunning incidents where a certain demographic groups are served well while others languish in failure and mediocrity.

There is need for the education fraternity to revisit the current and historical diversity inequities that have affected education, coming up with better structures that will inspire, engage and sustain the differences by engaging in lively conversation on the class, race, gender and various dimensions of diversity.

It is important to increase the consciousness by involving the core leadership in institutions which will come up with an equity statement ensuring a respectful educational environment for staff and students irrespective of the gender, religion, nationality, or even age.

The interaction with parents, teachers and an alumni in the multicultural setting served me with firsthand information unlike what is generally read and reported from different sources. The challenges makes them not so open to discussing the deepest of their experiences which now puts me on a good stead as an educator and a member of a school community to ensure a better experience for all students regardless of the points of diversity, which is achievable through ensuring staff reads from the same script.

References

https://www.greatschools.org/new-york/white-plains/4094-Ridgeway-School/#Students

http://steiner.edu/pages/about-us-page-v1/