Cultural Consciousness

I was really glad that cultural consciousness was addressed in this week's readings. I have always thought that it should be featured much more in ISU's ESL education program than it is. A person's culture is going to define a lot of their beliefs and behaviors, and it is absolutely critical to have a thorough understanding of a student's culture in order to successfully interact with him or her. Without understanding that in Japan, it is considered impolite to ask questions during a lecture, a teacher or classmate may be led to believe that the student in question has a complete understanding of the material, when the opposite may be true. Or on the other hand, a teacher may believe a non-participating student to be lazy, when that student is following the social politeness rules dictated by his or her culture. I really wish that ISU would require some sort of "Multicultural Issues in the Classroom" class so that we would be a bit more prepared to take on the challenge of understanding and accommodating students of all cultural backgrounds in our classrooms.