Title: Stepping Beyond Diversity in the Classroom
This presentation will focus on specific strategies that can be used by professors with classrooms that are comprised of both American-born students and students from nations around the world. My experience in teaching international and American-born students has led me to develop a specific methodology called “culture bumps” that allows me to use my cultural differences with my students in order to continually examine my own perceptions about language, student/teacher relationships and the nature of learning itself. As a result, I have developed specific strategies that I use in assessing my students’ needs and tailoring classes to my students. This presentation will provide the symposium participants with specific strategies that can be immediately applied in their classroom including assessing a students’ stage of cultural adjustment and ways to utilize that knowledge, along with steps for utilizing one’s own culture bumps in the classroom to enhance the learning experience of all students
Biosketch:
Carol Archer is the author of Living with Strangers in the U.S.A:Communicating Beyond Culture, a book that grew out of her extensive ethnographic research into inter-personal, intercultural communication. The originator of the culture bump theory and methodology, she has a Doctorate in Education with a research focus on culture and urban studies. For the last six years, she has focused on applying her research findings in teacher training, corporate training and educational materials. To this end, her latest project, A Toolkit for Culture and Communication, was published by the University of Houston Office of Intellectual Property. Her program for teacher training, Step Beyond Diversity: Creating Community, has been implemented in various school districts and colleges as well as in corporate settings.