Chapter 2: Today's Students

In America, schools have a variety in their racial and ethnic diversity; there is evidence of this in the first part of the book The Joy of Teaching; by Gene E. Hall, Linda F. Quinn, and Donna M. Gollnick. The largest concentration of students of color is in the western part of the United States; the least diverse part of the country is the Midwest (U.S. Census Bureau, 2004). Most teachers belong to the majority race, which can cause difficulty relating to students from minority cultures. Teachers need to engage students in a way that all ethnic groups learn, and not favorite their own group. The problem is that more and more varieties of people are immigrating and moving to less densely populated areas, and sooner or later the Western part of the U.S. is going to have a very diverse range of students. Teachers need to become involved in the community, and all the varieties of culture within it, to help incorporate cultural differences, and engage students based on their ethnicity.