Cultural Awareness Project

ELEM 6533

Teresa Weaver, Chera Davis, Disha Mehta, Barbara Bloomquist, Aleisha

Williams, Stephanie Scoggan

Why Social Media?PROS

• It’s Global! • Not limited by geography, miles

or time• Ability to instantly share

experiences or events• Immediate feedback• Meet new people• Reconnect with friends and

family• Powerful communication tool• It’s quick, fun and easy

CONS

• Unable to read body language, facial expression or voice tone and inflection

• May not depict intimacy, emotions or communicate feelings

• Lack of participants undivided attention

• Inability to control conversational flow

• Message may be misconceived

What will I get out of Social Networking?

• Friendship, Community and a sense of belonging

• Ability to receive and offer support, experiences, opinions or expertise

• Opportunity to connect globally• Provides the human connections we all crave• Share opinions, discuss issues and ability to

come together in a crisis

Conversation should be valued

in any form• We shouldn’t think of Social

Media as a replacement for face to face relationships, but as a way to keep our conversations going across the years and the miles.

What we learned from our face to face conversation with “Tina.”

Sitting down face to face with food and beverage gave us a way to begin a conversation

and connect on a personal level

We entered eager to share our culture, but left fascinated with and wanting to know more

about her culture

Family tradition is at the root of the Chinese culture as it is in the US, and her family has sacrificed to make sure she receives a good

education

Teachers connect immediately with each other and begin sharing classroom anecdotes and

antics

Using slang, figurative speech and idiomatic expressions in our conversation resulted in

some amusing misunderstanding

Girls everywhere, just want to have fun! We shared fashion tips, pictures, funny family stories, and great places to go on vacation

What’s In A Name?

Name Game

• Played game to introduce ourselves • Name game demonstrated how we are

connected• Difficulty of names through cultures• Changing of names to fit in• Learning new cultures

Technology

Learning and Refining Skills

• Discussion Threads• Blogs• Facebook

Images courtesy of:

www.facebook.comwww.twitter.comwww.mazzetti.com

FamilyA glue that holds us together.

Family Traditions

• Traditions are ties that bind two or more people together. They can be cultural, religious, or familial. It glues the family and strengthens the bond.

• Through our conversations, we learned that all of us come from different cultures and have different traditions.

• Christmas, Thanksgiving, Chinese New Year, and Diwali.

Successes and Challenges

• Successes– Learned about

classmates/university students

– Allowed for everyone to voice their opinion

– Time availability

• Challenges– Lack of participation

– Time constraints

– Navigating the different media

Community

We all just want to belong

Community within the Classroom

 How to promote cultural awareness within the classroom setting

• Teachers can create an open and safe forum for students to share their culture with their peers.– Blogs– Classroom circle meetings– In class writings about culture and share their

writings with the class

Community within the Classroom

 How to promote cultural awareness within the classroom setting (continued)

• Students celebrate holidays or special events from their peers’ cultures.

• Students can invite their peers into their culture for a day.– Show and tell – Native cuisine day

Creative ideas for Elementary Teachers

• Have students write letters to students in another state or country.

• Partner with a teacher in another country that is teaching ESL, working with the Peace Corps, or Teach for America to exchange ideas/information.

• Invite guest speakers to come in to speak to students about celebrations/customs/traditions.

How This Experience Affected Us

• We learned through this experience that we are really more alike than we are different—this would prove to be a valuable lesson for students.

• To learn about the diversity of cultures that exists enables us all to grow and become better citizens of the world!