CASE STUDY: CULTURAL AWARENESS  2

Case Study: Cultural Awareness

Cultural Responsiveness
“Give ELLs opportunities to create performance-based products (e.g., oral reports, games,
storyboards, or artwork) based on their readings in order to deepen their understanding of the
content and to promote their oral language development at the same time” (Thompson, 2010).
Jia will be guided on how to create artwork that resembles the butterfly and be shown
pictures of its lifecycle, this will help her first understand the concept in her own cultural context,
and now this will be much easier for her to understand it in English.
Linguistic responsiveness
“Provide more wait time for content-based and literacy activities during class for processing new
content and constructing meaning using their new language” (Honigsfeld & Cohan, 2015).
This approach will be used to accommodate Jia in the lesson by allowing more time for
her process the new content in a language different from her own. Also, more time will be spent
elaborating the content in simple terms to ease her process of understanding and retaining the
new content. Being patient with Jia is very critical to her learning process as she is trying to cope
in a new environment and learn a new language. Thus, she will require more time than the rest of
the students, and this is one of the accommodative approaches to ensure that as an ELL, she
transitions well and learns as the rest of the student learn.
Reflection
It is critical for a teacher to understand the cultural identities of his or her students to be
able to provide tailored instruction that will aid in the holistic development of a student.
Honigsfeld & Cohan, (2015), states “Because teachers must consider issues of race and students’
identity development, it may be helpful to honestly self-examine your own understanding of
race, issues of disproportionality, and your role in supporting equality among students.”

CASE STUDY: CULTURAL AWARENESS  3
Understanding cultural identities ensures that the teacher promotes cultural awareness among the
students and avoids cultural destructiveness. Cultural knowledge informs the instruction process.
The teacher is able to incorporate instructional approaches that will be accommodative of
students’ needs based on their unique cultural identities. Such a teacher does not trivialize
cultural differences. On the contrary, he or she designs approaches that will help the students get
over cultural barriers and understand taught content even better.
I had not had an intercultural experience, and I plan on traveling to a different country
and attending seminars and conferences on multiculturalism so that I can get more exposure to
such experiences. An intercultural experience will be beneficial to me in as an educator in the
classroom because I will be more exposed to different cultural experiences and perspectives and
it will be easier for me to understand the cultural identities of my students. Also, such an
experience would enhance my cultural competency, which is essential for a teacher interacting
with students from different cultural backgrounds. It would help me understand that cultural
differences indeed exist and the impact they have on a student’s learning abilities. Therefore, my
cultural awareness would be increased, and this will help me create and build a culturally aware
classroom where students embrace their individual cultural identities, understand and respect one
another’s identities, and embrace diversity.

CASE STUDY: CULTURAL AWARENESS  4

References

Honigsfeld, A & Cohan, A. (2015). Serving English language learners [Electronic version].
Retrieved from https://content.ashford.edu/