Cultural Competence Essay
Cultural competence a primer for educators is a book in education that opens pathways for competence, and effective cross-cultural teaching. It brings about a clear understanding of how a complex a number of variety of psychological and social factors come together in shaping the teacher’s ability to work with students who are culturally different. The word primer is a basic and elementary book. The main objective of the book is to innate the whole process of learning which will ultimately lead to greater competence as a teacher.
The book has a number of chapters that cultural competence for instance racism, culture, ethnic children, and parenting families among others. The author of the text has really understood human diversity, ethnicity, and race among other diverse issues concerning human diversity. The text has comprehensively and adequately covered all forms of diversity by discussing all the main issues associated with human diversity and focusing on teaching students from different ethnic as well as racial groups. By focusing extensively on human diverse life as well as experiences the author has been able to address all the human diversity-related topics so as to avoid being discriminative in the textbook.
The author has realized that becoming culturally competent is a difficult and complex process of requires constant reflection and care. Therefore, the author focuses on the safety margin so that the ones that need to undertake the journey with him are in a position to do so without any sensitivity to any kind of diversity in human life. The author has been a teacher from the kindergarten level to the doctoral therefore has diverse experience on what teaching really requires as well as cultural competency in teaching. The author has been teaching a number of courses on multicultural issues in education whereby she was consulting in a number of districts as well as private firms and working in many institutions. She experienced color discrimination in her place of work hence making her gain a number of experiences in multicultural challenges and difficulties. Therefore it is of great pleasure for her to talk about cultural competency issues that are related to education and educators.
Culture is a pattern of human behavior, race, ethnicity, or social groups. Therefore cultural competence can be stated to be an acknowledgment as well as the incorporation of the part of the education system. It is the key to thriving in a culturally diverse education system as well as the learning process. It is the ability of a teacher to teach successfully students or pupils who come from different cultures than their own. It requires a teacher to develop personal as well as interpersonal sensitivity and awareness and underlying effective cross-cultural responsive teaching aspects.
There are a number of issues that shape our personalities and our professionals. Culture in school is a sum of beliefs, experiences, and values represented by the diversity of students and adults in our education system. Understanding our culture as well as that of others helps in the interactions with other people from diverse cultures. It helps us see the students and their families in a more clear policy that enables us to understand their success.
Cultural competence allows one to have an awareness of our own cultural identity and be able t view other cultures and ability to learn in building the varying community and other cultural norms of student affairs and their families. Cultural competence helps educators to understand the differences within a group and understands what makes each student unique and their different needs. As a teacher one needs to have a higher understanding and listening ability so to be able to understand the learner and to be able to prepare the various assessments. Despite the fact we are different and we build our relationships differently as a teacher we need to create a positive relationship with the learners.
Understanding the students’ needs offers insight into the results of cultural competence so as to be to close the achievement gap. It helps the educators recognize how the learner’s outcomes can be improved by combining the racial as well as minority contributions to the curriculum development and diversifying the diverse cultural practices. Most of the teachers suffer cultural incompetency since many of our urban communities’ teachers lack the cultural awareness that is required of them as class manager. It is not an easy thing but requires one to be willing to understand the learner’s culture and diversity. For each teacher, cultural competency means they are aware of the norms and tendencies of their students. All teachers need to understand that they are in fighting for their students’ lives and not expressing their egos. The white teachers should not focus on the historical dominance of the non-whites and Latinos but rather be in a position to focus on testing the student scores as well as increasing proficiency in various subjects such as mathematics. The common thread is the teacher-student-teacher relationship where the student comes first in the relationship. The teacher should be able to mentor students through the learning process. As a teacher, one is supposed to value diversity by respecting as well as accepting the differences, different cultural customs and backgrounds, values and different ways of communicating. As a teacher one should create a fair and equitable environment for everyone to be able to study.
Discrimination in education does not only means ignoring the student contribution according to their race or ethnicity but also includes not being aware of individual prejudices and the way the teacher communicates to students and ignoring cultural differences when handling students and communicating with them. The issue of ethnic sensitivity is not anything new and other culture sensitive aspect, what is new is how to implement the number of issues that enables race and ethnic equity. A culturally effective and competence system of education is one that sets a unifying value which might be called assumptions on how best to educate the different and diverse communities in the society and treat all the students equally. Creating an awareness of the differences involves what can go wrong in cross-cultural communications as well as knowing how to set them right hence enabling the teacher and the student solves the problems with respect and openness.
When students have knowledge of the student culture they are able to relate to the student behavior. This will enable them in avoiding a number of mistakes that a teacher may make in terms of race sensitivity. Given that society consists of different people with different cultures which are diverse hence there need for a teacher to be conversant with her student’s cultural diversities and be able to learn the information that is required to be known in a classroom or learning institution. Therefore, cultural competence should be a decision that should be made up by every educator. It is an ethical decision that will enable the educator to understand what is right and the fair thing that they should do when teaching. Race and ethnic topics are dangerous and therefore should be given priority by each educator and student as well. Learning ethnicity and cultural diversity can be carried out in any class work and progress through the course and education system.
References
Diller, J. V., & Moule, J. (2005). Cultural competence: A primer for educators. Thomson/Wadsworth.
Moule, J. (2011). Cultural competence: A primer for educators. Cengage Learning.
Cross, T. L. (2008). Cultural competence. Encyclopedia of social work, 20, 487-491.
Cultural Competence: A Primer for Educators. (2018). Google Books. Retrieved 7 March 2018, from https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=wek8AAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PR3&dq=cultural+competence+a+primer+for+educator&ots=_XGAlYYzG5&sig=QzIVKK2uG5ES7zvlNYZgneXAMgY#v=onepage&q=cultural%20competence%20a%20primer%20for%20educator&f=false
