The Turks and Caicos Islands
The Turks and Caicos Islands are made of rich cultures. The diversity of cultures means that many individuals from these regions do not share common grounds due to their lifestyles. Literacy levels are on the rise globally; in this case, every child is the Turks, and Caicos Islands require educations. This means that teaching professions have to make up classrooms full of students who come from different cultures. Early childhood educations teachers find it challenging to work under such conditions. The perceptions of such teachers change due to pressures that build upon them to deliver quality education to the student. Negative notions and ideologies are bound to build up or rise- if existing, due to the difficulty in the dissemination of the teachings to the students (Vittrup, 2016). The mental strengths of the ECDE teacher in the Turks and Caicos Islands are subjected to challenges due to the existing diversity among the students. Understandably, students who come from diverse cultures are at a setback when being taught new subjects or languages. Unlike their peers who understand the language, they find it hard to express themselves, and they lack models within their societies who bear an understanding of these foreign languages. It is an awkward position to be in being a teacher. This is because the success of the students reflects upon the teacher, and in this case, success is hard. This gives the ECDE teaches a difficult task of getting off from scratch and thus influences their perceptions about teaching is such conditions.
The teachers in TCI, however, have developed their custom ways of disseminating learning material. The hardships in a diverse environment have pushed them to adopt better ways of attaining success within a school. The first aspect is building trust with the student to create a relationship between them (Lin & Bates, 2014). This can start by knowing students by name and recognizing efforts in a classroom. The next step is acknowledging and understanding the cultures that are present in the TCI. Cultural knowledge reduces gaps within the students and teachers by being experiencing their lives. According to Villegas & Lucas, understanding cultural concepts makes it easy to come up with a culturally-based curriculum. This also enables the teachers and students to create cultural norms that will be used in unison within a classroom. Another step used by ECE teachers is the establishment of a repertoire of instructional strategies. This allows them to meet all the student needs and tackle individual setbacks among the students (Lin & Bates, 2014). Teachers in TCI are also adopting effective questioning strategies to influence participation. Lastly, teachers in TCI are creating good relations with the societies. They tap into the community to develop positive notions with schools and thus encouraging students from their cultures.
One of the challenges that teachers face in diverse cultures is language barriers. This makes it harder for them to deliver the proper leaning contexts, and thus the success of the students is limited. Another factor is the setbacks that the students have when getting into new learning. This makes it hard to execute excellent communication skills with the students. Diversity of the cultures means that extracurricular activities will be diverse. Teachers are given the burden of informing the students about specific activities and their importance. The effort to meet the need of the students means that ECE teachers are required to understand the cultures (Vittrup, 2016). The presence of diverse cultures means that the teachers will have difficulty in executing these concepts.