Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Navigation

It is one thing to teach a student how to be culturally sensitive to a given context. You can teach them how to politely eating bushmeat in Cameroon, to watch both the players and the audience at a soccer game in Brazil, or to only use their right hand in Middle Eastern environments.

It is a whole different thing to teach a student how to navigate different cultures, understanding both the surface icons, what they signify about the culture and decoding the right behavior from that association. Some of the latter also includes lots of observations, talking about these concepts in community and having a learning posture.

You could do this too. Start with asking students to:
+ Identify symbols that are different in their new context versus their home context
+ Tangibly engage in something different, like food, music or language.
+ Explain the relationship between a cultural icon in their school/home/etc and the meaning behind it.

Ember will be doing some of this with students in early April. DC is our playground.

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