Many steps must be taken to help students understand and accept different backgrounds and cultures that they may encounter on a daily basis. In order to encourage diversity in the classroom, students must fully comprehend different cultures, races, and ethnicities and can only then be taught that they must include everyone, regardless of these outside forces. For one example, asking students to bring in a food from their background, or tell stories of home holidays, gives children an insight to their peer's traditions. Additionally, showing the students people with different shapes, sizes, and ethnicities doing things that they do (going to the park, seeing a movie, going shopping, etc.) gives them a chance to connect with and humanize people that they wouldn't have otherwise encountered. Teachers can also have guest speakers from different backgrounds come and speak, showing that role models can come out of all cultures. In order to teach respect, teachers can educate the students on history, and how the contributions of many different individuals created the state that we are in now.
It is the job of the teachers to be the backbone of accepting all different groups. In order to do this, all teachers must treat each individual with the same amount of confidence, patience. and understanding. They must encourage participation, even if home beliefs foster varying answers to the same question. They must monitor the humor and language used in the classroom, and make sure that these are not offensive to any particular group. Teachers should be aware of the different types of students in their classroom, and encourage group work to promote individual capacities. It should be of utmost importance to the teacher that each student leaves the classroom with the same education, regardless of what they came in there with and where they came from.
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