What Every Teacher Should Know Before Teaching!

 There is no doubt that our country is diverse.  It is a nation full of diversity in regards to cultures, religious views, intelligence, etc.  Because of this, it is important for educators to do their best to understand that students differ in their approaches to learning and consequently create learning opportunities that are adapted to diverse learners.

            A first way that teachers can meet the needs of diverse learners is to hold high expectations for all students.  Many times, teachers’ expectations fall short of the actual rigor students need.  This goes as far as not having their course rigor reflect authentic academic work nor a teaching environment suitable for their students to learn.  However, having a rigorous curriculum is very essential to all students learning.  With a more rigorous curriculum, students are required to use many skills that they otherwise wouldn’t. A rigorous curriculum causes students to take some type of action, develop their own questions, and to retain this information.  In doing this, the student also learns to importance of hard work in order to do something well.

            It is also very important for teachers to make lessons relevant to the lives of their students.  If the teacher works with their students’ passions and interests, the academic rigor can not only increase, but the students would be more likely to care about their school work and thus try harder. One way to do this is by connecting learning to real world contexts.  Connecting the curriculum to real life context not only helps the students relate to a subject but it also teaches them the importance of the complexity and difficult nature of the real world.

            With high rigor and relevance in mind, it is also important for teachers to take into consideration the culture or each student when designing their lesson plans.  One main point of this topic is to meet the needs of English Language Learners.  All too often ELL students are being reclassified or transferred to different schools within only a year of being there.  According to the article, many ELL students in mainstream classrooms rarely utter more than a few words, which actually stunts their English development and academics in general.  Another consequence of this is that these students are not even finishing high school.  It is essential to keep in mind that all students vary widely in their background, prior education experiences, linguistics, and academic strengths and needs. Teachers can address this diversity in their lesson plans by combining a variety of teaching styles. Combining visual, verbal, and print cues is one way ELL students can make meaning of words easier. Teachers can also stress graphic organizers which allow students to quickly visualize and retain knowledge.  Another simple example to incorporating all cultures is to put on English captions if a teacher were to play a movie.  These are just a few ways teachers can help meet the needs of the diverse cultures found in the school system.