Cultural
Competence is enter-linked with being able to be culturally responsive in teaching.
To adhere to 8.2 Growing and Developing Professionally, as I learned during EDU6918
discussion, I need to be culturally responsive to my students and fellow
colleagues in order to positively impact student learning. Meaning that, as an
educator, I must be aware of not only my students’ cultural heritage,
interests, and level of understanding, but also my colleagues’. In doing so, I
have the capacity to communicate, seek out and receive feedback from fellow
colleagues effectively.
In order to grow and
develop professionally, I believe that it is essential that I open my mind to
the students, school, community and world around me. As presented in Figure 1,
there are four basic cultural competence skill areas: Valuing diversity, being
culturally self-aware, understanding the dynamics of cultural interactions, and
institutionalizing cultural knowledge and adopting diversity (Roekel, 2008). In
today’s society, especially in education, you do not have the option of being
culturally unaware or absent. Although it is our hope to be all the same, it is
a reality that we all are different. This is something that I will face as an
educator. I will be different than a lot of the individuals I work with because
of age, gender, culture, interests, experiences, SES, and so forth. No two
people are the same, so I believe that in really any situation there will be
some type of dynamics of differences. There will be times that the differences
will be small and other times the differences will be large, depending on where
and what I teach. I believe that I can raise awareness of my own culture and
experiences by using constructive communication amongst those I work with. In
addition, I think that it is important that when I don’t know I ask questions
so that I do know. By seeking growth in Roekel (2008)’s skill areas, I believe
that I have the potential to be a better educator, colleague, friend, and
participant in society.
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