never make assumptions…

I taught in Africa for a year so there were many cultural differences between myself and my students. I am a middle-class white female teaching in a low-income urban school so there are many differences in this situation too. What I do is just act like I’ve heard it all before. I don’t ever show that anything shocks me even if it does inside. Then later, I can reflect and get more information if needed. I think you just have to be super open-minded and have a go-with-the-flow attitude. Also remember that these are all learning experiences. Your students shouldn’t be the only ones learning in your classroom.

Yes and no. I taught composition, communications, and linguistics for 35 years on the university level. One year I was teaching a composition course made up entirely of foreign students. They were from Finland, Nigeria, Iran [this was back in the years when we propped up the Shah, before their Islamic Revolution] Germany, etc. One day I told them a story to illustrate the problems we were going to have overcoming our combined grammatical and cultural differences. I ripped the story off from the Journal Etc. – which published essays on Semantics and Semiotics: An American advertising man was pitching an ad campaign to the Japanese distributors of American deodorant products to be sold in Japan. He showed them a storyboard which featured an octopus which was applying “underarm” deodorant with 4 of its arms under the other 4 arms. There was silence and then confusion from the Japanese. “Don’t you get it?” he asked them. “Yes,” they said. “But in Japan we think of them as legs.”

After my story the room erupted with similar stories where culture, or language, or both, broke down and in the words of Cool-Hand Luke: “What we have here, is a failure to communicate.”

Her race and income level have nothing to do with the fact that she did not know what an eggplant was. She had just never been exposed to one. If I was her I would be offended also. I find it very offensive that you think her race and income have any thing to do with the fact she did not know what it was.

i’ve got traveled to Europe whilst a scholar in a team, and this is totally virtually choosing up on reasonable cultural changes. the way save workers handle you is distinctive, the way eating places artwork is extremely distinctive, there is so lots greater pickpocketing…if those are the forms of changes you’re conversing approximately. I on no account have been given custom marvel over there, nor did any of my fellow commute friends. it is not THAT distinctive over there. in case you have the different questions permit me understand and that i’ll be happy to respond to as suitable i can.