When we acknowledge that our classrooms are natural extensions of our own culture, we can begin to make room for the cultures of others. So at the point we decide that we want to implement more culturally responsive instruction, where to do we start? The first step is recognizing how our own cultural conditioning is reflected in our teaching: how we set up our classroom, establish relationships with students, even how we design and deliver our lessons. These hidden aspects of culture can cause misunderstandings and cross-group conflicts they can impact teacher-student and student-student relationships, and create hard-to-identify barriers to academic content matter.

These more nuanced differences might include how we understand and define concepts like family, responsibility, education, and success. Less visible are the different ways in which our cultures influence our understanding of the world and how we interact with others. We recognize the obvious cultural differences such as foods, heroes, holidays, arts, and clothing - differences that, much like the tip of the iceberg, are clearly visible above the water. Given that research, test data, and anecdotal evidence repeatedly confirm that culture plays a significant role in teaching and learning, student diversity challenges us to explore ways to bridge cultural differences and develop culturally sensitive teaching practices that recognize and accept these differences.ДЄnd teachers, like their students, behave in ways that reflect their culture. We currently live in a world where our knowledge about other cultures, languages, and traditions is extremely important to foster understanding and mutual respect, and we are now expecting teachers to be our first responders on the front line in this complex task. But meaningful multicultural education must go beyond saying that we're a 'melting pot,' having an ethnic food celebration a couple of times a year, and acknowledging a few well-known historical figures. Our country has always been home to people of many different cultures and ethnic backgrounds. With a global economy in place and our technology moving at a rate faster than we'd ever imagined, every teacher needs more help meeting the needs of and being culturally responsive to his/her students, many of whom now have roots in places like Mexico, Puerto Rico, Vietnam, Somalia, Croatia, and Jordan. Our public schools are again being asked to meet the challenges that come with a rapidly growing and diverse population. Now turn the clock forward a hundred years. Soon, many of the children enrolled in our public schools had come from such faraway places as Italy, Poland, Greece, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Russia, and China. Take America at the turn of the 20th century - that's when our country experienced one of its major influxes of newcomers, and waves of immigrants made their way to our shores.

In the beginning, our nation was primarily the home of Native Americans and other indigenous groups representing more than 400 languages, Africans from a wide range of different regions, and Europeans of mostly British heritage. While we are more explicit about our recognition of various groups and ethnic differences, we have always been a diverse nation.

Patrick's Day, Cinco de Mayo, Kwanzaa, Labor Day, the Jewish holidays, and many others. Along with these we also observe and recognize Martin Luther King Day, St. Growing in popularity are American Indian/Alaska Native Heritage Month and Asian Pacific Heritage Month. Some of the most prominent are African-American History Month, Hispanic Heritage Month, and Women's History Month. Our nation is rich in many cultural and religious traditions, and celebrations focusing on specific groups have grown and become more popular in the last twenty years. Cynthia Lundgren for more great tips on culturally responsive instruction!

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