“We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!” excitedly sang the students in the Pacific Northern Academy (PNA) Orca class. And yet, a little earlier, with just as much merriment, this same class was heard to belt out “Dreidel, dreidel, dreidel, I made it out of clay!” while they each took turns spinning a Hanukkah dreidel. In that same week, the Orcas were seen enthusiastically moving their bodies to the steady beat of the Kwanzaa drums while as they colored their red, black, and green Kwanzaa Kinaras. “PNA’s mission and vision are to educate students to be exceptional learners and independent thinkers of vision, courage, and integrity. Critical thinking infuses and informs our culture.” One way we inform our culture is by learning about the diversity of cultural heritages that creates our community. Teaching cultural awareness in the classroom has many benefits for an individual.

• It teaches empathy for those that are different from themselves.
  • So often we feel threatened by beliefs of traditions that are different than our own. By exposing students to a diversity of cultures while they are young, they can come to see that even when someone looks or acts differently they are also very much the same as themselves and deserve the same level of respect. This last month we celebrated Native American Heritage Day and our Orca class learned about the Alaska Natives that live in our area. We became very respectful of the culture and the struggles of the people as we created a hand drum and learned many Alaska Native dances.
• Students gain a greater understanding of the world they live in.
  • Our world has become very global and interconnected. As we have studied Christmas traditions from around the world we not only learned new words and customs but we also studied a map of the world and learned about the different continents. We discussed the terms, near and far, as we mapped out how close each country was to Alaska. Furthermore, it blew their minds when they found out that in Australia, Christmas is celebrated in the hot summertime. This gave rise to a discussion about the earth’s axis tilt that creates the different seasons of the world.

• Students embrace being more open-minded and seeing that not everyone lives like themselves.
  • It was very fascinating to the students to learn about the Italian tradition of La Befana, the good witch that flies around Italy on January 6th, delivering gifts to boys and girls. In America witches are seen as scary so the students were delighted with this good witch. They also found it interesting Santa Claus is not as popular in Italy as in America.

• Students feel more confident and secure when faced with differences later on in life.
  • As students grow up they will become exposed to more and more difference. Being taught how to handle differences while they are young will allow them to comfortable deal with it later.

• It can prepare students for diversity in an ever-increasing global society.
  • With the rise of internet and international travel, our student’s future is likely to be very different than the one we were raised in. Furthermore, our own Orca class is already a very internationally diverse classroom with backgrounds from four of the six inhabited continents.

• Bullet point ideas adapted from https://drexel.edu/soe/resources/student-teaching/advice/importance-of-cultural-diversity-in-classroom/

These are just a few of the reasons cultural awareness is important in our classrooms. As we become more interconnected with the world around we become more of the community that fosters independent thinkers of vision, courage, and integrity. On behalf of the PNA Orca class, we wish you a very merry Happy Holidays!