Essay on Diversity and Surface-Level Diversity

Diversity has significant importance for the promotion of creativity and excellence in the students. Currently, in schools and other educational institutes of developing countries has highly diverse classrooms. Mainly classroom diversity can be categorized into two levels: Deep-level diversity and surface-level diversity. In educational institutes of USA, we can find out both level of diversity.  International students contribute to increases in deep-level diversity in the classrooms. International students come from various states and countries around the world. They belong to a different culture, social values, religions, race, sexual orientation, languages, educational systems, and family backgrounds that influence their learning, creativity, intellectual capabilities, and class participation (Shen, Chanda, D’Netto, & Monga, 2009). While on the other hand, surface-level diversity is also common in the classroom. Surface-level diversity relates to both international students and domestic students.

Considering the role of diversity in students learning I ever appreciated diversity in my classrooms. I had students from different countries and geographical religions who typically had different roles in the classroom. However, in my views, diversity is not easy to manage as a mentor as it causes to increase chances of conflicts in the classrooms. I also experienced conflicts in the classroom because of diversity. Moreover, I also found that diversity was causing to influence performance outcomes and academic achievements of the students.  For instance, in my classroom, some students were from the Middle East. They were unable to fully understand my lectures and participate in the classrooms because of language barriers. They had come there from Arabic based educational system. Thus, after observing their behaviour and previous academic excellence I realized their problem and presented a solution of free-English learning session for all those students who were not good at the English language. This initiative enabled them to overcome their weaknesses and become a high achiever in the classroom. Somehow, during my mentoring experience at a local educational institute, I also tried my best to meet with the prime objectives behind this diversity.

I knew that diversity is a key to enhance creativity in the students thus I thought of activities to be done in the classroom which can involve diversity as a key to increase creativity. I had organized classroom activities and projects among diverse students to provide them with an opportunity to communicate with each other and share different views on the given scenario. Thus, through organizing these activities I was able to increase their creativity, intellectual abilities, and interaction with other classmates which is important for social adjustability. Conclusively, the overall experience of mentoring diverse student’s population was an opportunity for me to learn about the factors which can be influencing for the learning and classroom experiences of students in the diverse classrooms. Moreover, I also learned what kind of role mentors should play to deal with diversity-related issues appropriately and remain positive with students to enhance their learning. I was capable to deal with the diversity issues because of my experience learned previously at a local organization. I had worked at a local organization which had staff members from various backgrounds (Toppo & Overberg, 2014).

During working there I was also appointed as head of the team which had three members two of them were from different countries. Therefore while working with I learned how to deal with a diverse team.  Apart from learning, I also actively participated to promote diversity in my classroom. I communicated with the head of the institute to encourage him to offer special offers for international students in the fees to make the institute highly diverse. Moreover, I also encouraged my international students to motivate their family members and social circles to have enrollment at my institute. Furthermore, I also worked to create communities of inclusion by developing some special strategies and policies to retain diversity. For instance, we created discipline rules for the students which were applicable for all students excluding any kind of discrimination. Additionally, I also developed a plan for individual performance rewards in the classroom. For these performance awards, I presented a rubric and grading scale system to the whole classroom. I evaluated their projects based on these pre-defined criteria. Thus, I appreciated their efforts and performance in the projects on a fair basis without having any kind of discriminations regarding race, culture, gender and religion.  However, my evaluation criteria were also the same for the students who had any kind of physical disability (Kundu & Mor, 2017).

Moreover, in my classroom, some students were having physical disabilities relating to weak eyesight, lame, dumb, and poor health. Somehow, all the time I was working their mentor I did not forget the concept of inclusion of communities (Richards & Armstrong, 2015). I always encouraged my students equally and appreciated them as the active participants of this community. For instance, one of my students was having a speaking problem which made him a target of ironic comments in the classroom. I took action and developed some strict rules regarding such activities and classroom stereotyping. Although, I ever tried to appreciate his performance in studies to make him confident about his capabilities. Conclusively, I ever appreciated all students and encouraged them by saying that they all will capability to contribute to the community developed.