Imagine That! You are a teacher in a classroom in Georgia who is completing student teaching. You get your course assignments over the summer and notice a lot of students with uniquely Middle Eastern sounding names. This is odd for your district, as your district is racially, linguistically, and culturally homogenous, typically. You inquire with your administration and they explain that a small group of refugees from Syria have been granted asylum and resettled in your district and they have been placed together to help them better adjust to the United States. You are excited to get to help this group of students who have seen much violence and chaos, but you don’t know how to best serve them while also serving the needs of your other students. You’re a “start at the beginning” type of teacher, so you think “well, there are a few approaches I could take. I could 1. Try to help them assimilate to their new culture here in the US. 2. Try to help acculturate them. Or 3. Try to simply appreciate cultural differences between their original Syrian culture and their new US culture and leave it at that.”
With summer ending and the school year fast approaching, it’s time to make the call. What will your approach with this unique group of students be?
Consider what you would do. Using the terms 1. Assimilation, 2. Acculturation, 3. Syncretism, 4. Multicultural, and 5. Ethnic minority, explain how you would approach this situation.