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What is your story?
As exploring Canadian history and my personal experience as an international student in Canada, I decided to create a Grade 8 inquiry project in BC focus on cultivating students understanding of other cultures and prepare for the shifting and complex world. It is crucial for them to realize that building relationships with people from different cultures is not only good for their work but also good for their development. Diversity is key in building communities that are powerful enough to achieve significant goals. We are living in a digital age, most children are addicted to social media like Instagram and Snapchat. What the social media represents race has a big impact on how society views race. While the media is a reflection of a culture at large, it keeps racial stereotypes alive and well and therefore fuels racism. To break down those racial stereotypes, schools and teachers should create an open and critical environment for students to find the truth by exploring the history. An ignorance of history may lead to the the prejudice and misunderstanding of a culture.
In this project, student will take steps to create a video in relation to a non-Canadian culture. Through the inquiry process, students will have the opportunities to explore a non-Canadian culture and deepen the understanding of how the different cultures shape the Canadian society where they belong to. When they learn the history of a different culture and how the differences bring about a diverse and richness society, the racism and discrimination might decrease. Moreover, I will also introduce the hidden history of Canadian history such as “residential schools” and “Chinese Head Taxes”.
Big Ideas
1.Understanding the diversity and complexity of cultures contributed to student success within the complex world and the development of critical thinking.
2.Understanding different cultures contributes to the diversity and richness of Canadian society.
3.Geographic and environmental factors influenced the development of complex cultures.
Core Competences
Communication- How to have an open attitude toward the diverse and complex society through a “conversation” with history and different cultures?
Thinking– If we live in the present, why we need to care the past?
Personal and Social
-How does the exploration and learning of past history break down the racial stereotype?
-How does the understanding of different culture contribute to your learning?
Retrieved from https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/competencies
Step 1:
The first step might be challenged for the immigrant students. They might struggle with two or more different cultures during the process. Each student needs to explore their own culture by doing some research or other format. They could follow the 8 questions to foster their exploration. After that, they will have a short presentation to show others their own cultures. This step is to help students be aware and confident of their own cultures. Even though racism happens all the time, but it is important for people to have a good knowledge and confidence of their own cultures.
- What is your religion?
- What is your nationality?
- What is your race?
- What is your ethnicity?
- What is your geographic region?
- What bias do you have?
- Why do you have the bias?
- What kind of situation makes you feel like racism and unsafe?
Step 2 Building relationships with people from many different cultures.
How do you build relationships with people from other cultures? Students are going to divide into different groups based on the geographic locations. Each group will choose a non-Canadian culture and do some research on the culture. They are going to make a poster or make a presentation to show what they’ve learned about cultures. It could be food customs and traditional festivals from different cultures. The topic could be anything students are interested in and curious about.
Here are some possible questions for students to consider.
- How did your parents feel about different ethnic, racial, or religious groups?
- What did your parents communicate to you with their actions and words?
- Were your parent’s friends with people from many different groups?
- What did you learn in school about a particular group?
- Was there a lack of information about some people?
- Are there some people you shy away from? Why?
- What are the similarities and differences between two different cultures?
I believe that the purpose of education is to help students foster their competencies of solving myriad problems when they face the bewilderingly complex world. As globalization has been more popular, a different culture is a key part of contributing to a diverse community that is more efficient and successful to achieve a significant goal. Students need to have the ability to question and adapt to different cultures. Bai (2005) argues that school is where students start learning formally, and they will encounter myriad challenges and difficulties. (Bailey, 2013) brings a significant aspect on the importance of creating an engaging environment for students to learn, build up their confidence and own a bright future. Above all, they are expecting to receive freedom and more diverse resources from schools and teachers, which they do not get enough of these kinds of support and resources from schools and teachers.
Through the project, students will get a chance to examine their biases about people from other cultures as they are exploring their own and others cultures by reading other people’s cultures and histories instead of expressing their own opinions based on stereotypes and misinformation. It is a fact that people all carry misinformation and stereotypes about people in different cultures. People especially the young acquire information from TV, social media, and from listening to people’s talk. The inquiry-based technique could help students find their interests and develop their abilities to learn even though the process of inquiry-based learning may be a little bit slower. However, Grumet (2006) states that we are “not a part of the world”; we are always “the correlate of a world” (p. 50). Your thoughts can create the world instead the world creates your thoughts. In a long term, the inquiry-based learning technique is to build up an individual who has their own thoughts and abilities to solve the uncertain, immeasurable, irreducible unpredictable problems in their lives. From my perspective, the spirit of inquiry will foster student critical thinking and their life skills which is beneficial for them to own a fulfilled and meaningful life.