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No matter what your high school classroom is like, cultural diversity will be a part of students’ daily experiences. They may feel out of place in their school, or they may be unsure of how to accept others in their environment. High school students may rely on stereotypes and biases that prevent them from connecting with their peers.
Whether you are a new teacher or a seasoned teacher, you can help young people overcome these barriers of communication with relatives and incorporate cultural awareness into your lesson plans from the beginning. Learn how to plan high school cultural diversity lessons with a few tried-and-true teaching tips, words of wisdom from experienced teachers, and high-quality resources that work well with any multicultural goal in your curriculum.
1. Make cultural conversations the norm
It’s tempting to leave important cultural conversations out of your discipline. After all, you might accidentally upset someone, cause a conflict, or alienate a student while trying to make your classroom more welcoming and multicultural. But avoiding these moments makes conversations difficult to have in the long run.
Avoid being uncomfortable with cultural conversations by planning these conversations regularly in your lesson plans. Have students think about how the characters’ cultures may affect their decisions, or explore historical discussions of how cultures have influenced world politics. Moderate these discussions to ensure that everyone’s views are being heard. These conversations build community in the classroom and go a long way in making students feel safe and welcome.
Focus on ownership and a sense of belonging
No one wants to feel singled out among their peers, but sometimes the pressure to conform can feel uncomfortable. Show students that understanding and respecting their identity can be the key to feeling like they truly belong, in their peer groups and in your classroom.
Identity Unit | Diversity of Incorporation vs Eligibility | Lessons & Projects
By LifeFluent – Health Education
Grades: 7th-12th
Topics: Character Education, School Counseling
Use this comprehensive identity unit to help students embrace their true identities and feel comfortable in their peer groups. With four full lessons, handouts, a 75-slide presentation, and four-dimensional thinking activities, the resource has everything you need to tackle important copyright topics as they relate to inclusion and respect.
2. Add cultural principles to your lesson plans
Learning to plan a lesson for new teachers involves setting learning goals for the lesson and the unit as a whole. How can you incorporate a focus on cultural diversity into your curriculum without compromising these educational goals?
Integrate cultural objectives into your lesson plans to ensure you address diversity throughout your teaching. Possible goals may include addressing student identity, using writing prompts to reflect on student experiences, and using a diverse collection of media and learning resources to address as many learning styles and backgrounds as possible.
Explore cultural diversity from an SEL perspective
Cultural identity and diversity are often discussed separately from emotional learning, but when students have a strong sense of their identity, they can feel more comfortable with their feelings and experiences. Include high school SEL activities that address cultural identity and values in your curriculum, and help students find pride and belonging in their most important parts.
Multicultural Curriculum – Diversity, Ethnicity, Bias, Identity Health Unit
For Health Education Today – Health and PE Resources
Grades: 9-12
Topics: Civics, Health, Social Studies
Grades: CCSS RST.9-10.2, 3, 4, 6; WHST.9-10.1, 4
This ready-to-go set of multicultural and ethnic diversity activities is easy to incorporate into your SEL lesson today. The CCSS-aligned resource comes with three versions of an instructional slideshow, exercises and answer keys, student examples, and guided teacher guides to keep your instruction focused.
3. Use a variety of words in your lesson plan
One of the easiest ways to plan cultural differences courses in high school is to bring new voices to your curriculum, whether that’s from the students’ textbook, new ideas in social studies, or the findings of history and current scientific research from different parts of the world.
A teacher’s tip
Give students more exposure to a variety of cultures. Repeated exposure builds understanding and respect. The goal is to routinely make a difference through a consistent, meaningful experience.
-Laura from Oodles of Music
Bring in writings from Hispanic authors during Hispanic Heritage Month in the fall, or feature speeches from prominent Black people as part of Black History Month in February. Choose reading passages written by people from underrepresented parts of the world, or have students research the lives of Indigenous groups in Oceania, North America, or Asia. Whichever method you choose, make sure students are exposed to the person’s direct words and experiences, rather than a historian’s perspective.
Diverse Voices in STEM: A Research Project with 175+ Statistics and Scientists
Through Artistic Access
Grades: 6th-12th
Subjects: Mathematics, Science
Add diverse voices from the 20th century to your math or science classroom with a list of over 175 people, a project selection board, and a research outline.
4. Find ways for families to share their traditions
You will find a wealth of multicultural knowledge represented in your classroom! Students from different ethnic, cultural, or religious backgrounds can be experts in their own lives – and their families’ experiences are important to share and understand.
Invite family members to speak to your class, or host a multicultural celebration so families can bring food or crafts. This interaction can help you build relationships with students and resolve any conflicts that arise as you make a genuine effort to understand their perspective and respect their families.
A teacher’s tip
Contact the families of your students who represent different racial, ethnic, and/or religious groups and ask if a parent or other guardian would be willing to talk to your class about their backgrounds. If they agree, videotape or record the adults talking to your class to create a resource bank for future use.
-Susan from ESL Nexus
5. Accept student information and ideas
No matter what culture students are from, they are likely to encounter cultural differences in some way when they arrive in your high school classroom. Encourage inclusion in the classroom and validate students’ experiences by allowing them to share times when they were misunderstood due to cultural differences, or when they were misunderstood by others.
Include these questions and information in a warm-up journal for high school students to reflect on important moments in their lives. You can also invite students to share times when they have felt that their culture separates them from others, or when they have noticed that cultural differences affect their friends or loved ones.
6. Transcend biases and stereotypes
Finding a way to address cultural stereotypes while not reinforcing them can be a struggle, even for seasoned teachers. Allow students to acknowledge biases and stereotypes that have affected them, or if they are an old enough group, beliefs they have had about other cultures that have affected their view of other people.
A teacher’s tip
Share advertising flops. Companies with big budgets and entire teams of well-educated people still screw things up because of cultural differences they didn’t know about, and readers LOVE to see that. It makes it easier for us to be kind when someone else’s cultural blind spots cause problems.
– Rick Neville
Explore the roots of this bias through history studies or series of stories and books written during a particular period. Discuss whether a “positive” stereotype is as harmful as a negative one, and see if students can identify the far-reaching implications and implications of group judgments of harmful stereotypes.
An Introduction to the Privilege of Stereotypes Microaggressions and the Function of Inclusion Bias
For Informed Decisions
Grades: 6th-12th
Subjects: Family and Consumer Sciences, Social Emotional Learning
This engaging course is designed to foster meaningful conversations about diversity, equity, and inclusion in the classroom by challenging students to analyze real-world situations and cultural awareness cards and categorize them into one of five key concepts: microaggressions, sensitivity, implicit discrimination, vulnerability, and bias.
7. Demonstrate lifelong learning and reflection
Understanding cultural differences is a task that everyone in your classroom needs to do – including you as the teacher. Modeling the process of exploring and accepting those differences can be an eye-opening moment for you and the students, and can make students from different cultures feel more secure in your understanding of their situations.
To demonstrate that reflection is one of the most important life skills activities for high school students, tell stories about cultural experiences you have had, including times when you were judged unfairly or treated unfairly. You can also write with your students about visual journal prompts or respond during a cross-cultural discussion. Most importantly, show students that you are open-minded to their needs and experiences, including changing part of your curriculum if they tell you it makes them uncomfortable or picky.
Find opportunities to be included in all disciplines
Learning to plan high school cross-cultural studies does not have to be a complicated part of your teaching process. If multicultural acceptance is one of your core values as a teacher, you will find that it permeates your lesson planning, instruction, and relationships with students—and that your teaching and classroom community will improve as a result. Find many high school resources to address cultural differences and diversity, and show students how important their membership in your school and classroom is.
