8.5 (8S4A): Ability to show respect for the diversity of students.

Introduction

As a paraprofessional, you may work with individuals from a variety of cultural and social backgrounds. Maintaining open communication is crucial in educational settings, especially with children and youth with disabilities and their families. The amount of contact paraprofessionals have with families varies widely. Increasingly, paraprofessional are employed as home-school liaisons, interpreters, and in parental involvement activities. Although the primary contact person between the school and families generally will be licensed staff, the following suggestions may help you in your communication with families, whether contacts are on a daily basis or less frequently.

It is helpful to recognize what your own thoughts and feelings are with regard to diversity. You need to be open and accepting of individuals with backgrounds that may be different from your own. While you may not fully understand different lifestyles and cultures, you must have respect and tolerance for diversity, and have a willingness to learn enough about diverse groups to work effectively with everyone.

Objectives

As you read the objectives for this unit, think about and rate your current knowledge using the following scale.

1. I do not understand this.
2. I do understand this.
3. I understand this well enough to use in my work.
4. I could teach others about it and use it in my work.

In this unit, you will:

• Learn about valuing diversity.
• Learn how to adapt to diversity.
• Determine what your own knowledge is with respect to diverse cultures.
• Realize the dynamics of cultural interactions.
• Learn about institutionalization of cultural knowledge.
• Gain an understanding of and demonstrate how to interacting and communicating in culturally sensitive ways.

The Para eLink is sponsored by the Minnesota Paraprofessional Consortium, in collaboration with the Minnesota Department of Education, located at the Institute on Community Integration in the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Minnesota.

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