6/1/20; Week 7: Response to Cross-Cultural Students in the Classroom Video

In Brother Ivers’s lecture about cross-cultural students in the American classroom (watch his lecture here: https://video.byui.edu/media/06+Cross-Cultural+Students+in+the+Classroom/0_r2lcaswt), he pointed out that when we have students who come from different cultures than we do, if their behavior ever strikes us as disrespectful or disruptive or odd in some way, we should never jump to conclusions. Chances are, their behavior is the result of them having different cultural paradigms than us, so to them, their behavior wasn’t disrespectful or disruptive at all!

As a future TESOL teacher, this concept is of crucial importance, since all of my students will be from different cultures than I am. I must keep an open mind, and not judge my students by my personal cultural paradigms, understanding that theirs are different than mine.

I don’t think this means that I should let any and all behavior be allowed in my classroom, though. If I did that, I think it would be different to foster a cohesive and functional learning environment. There do need to be classroom rules and standards. But when a student does something that seems inappropriate, rather than assuming that the student is misbehaving, my automatic assumption ought to be that their behavior stems from a different cultural paradigm. Then, if the behavior is something that is truly inappropriate in American culture, I should use the moment as a teaching opportunity. Instead of judging them for “misbehaving,” I should teach them what constitutes appropriate behavior in America, the country they are trying to live in now, to help them start to fit in better in their new home.

To me, this is the implication of Brother Ivers’s advice not to judge the behavior of people from other cultures: I should give them the benefit of the doubt, but I shouldn’t necessarily allow any behavior in my classroom. I should teach them the cultural norms of their new home, so that they can succeed living in America.