Empathy and Competence - Essay Example

This can validate the identities of culturally diverse children as well as be the role models for these children. Teachers who can understand and appreciate culturally different strengths and cultural resources of children are found to be much more effective teachers are more likely to provide enriching environments that celebrate everyone’s differences. However, since the teachers themselves are exposed to mainstream education where cultural diversity is not as celebrated as it is today, it is quite a challenge to adapt.

To address this need to adapt to the culturally-heavy classes, there are professional seminars and training that have been offered to them. One of these is the Family Literacy Nights with Latino families and their children since the Latino population comprise the biggest chunk of the culturally diverse population. With Family Literacy Nights, the teachers have interacted with the parents and the kids themselves. This project helped quash misconceptions about the culturally-diverse families.

With family literacy nights, the teachers have firsthand information about immigrant families. They empathized with the frustration that the parents have over language learning and their affinity to use their old language. They understood that these people can never think like the native speakers. They also learned that the parents want to help their children excel in their English-based classes but cannot help since they do not know the language. They also knew reasons why some families cannot come to school activities: location and time matter.

It is not that they do not support their children’s education, it’s because they do not have the means of transportation and the time to go to events (they have to work, and they are too poor to have a car). They also knew not to prevent the children from speaking their native language as this fosters sophisticated linguistic abilities (they had English-only policies then). The results of the study are positively significant and show that empathy and competence can work well in an educational setting.