Imagine walking into a classroom
papered with beautifully designed,
laminated posters extolling the virtues
of promoting diversity. After a day or two
you might not notice those posters, as you
are not connected to them emotionally. Imagine instead, walking into that same
room and seeing your self-portrait beside
those of your classmates. You remember
the excitement of painting that picture,
using a mirror to look at yourself, and
comparing the facial features and skin
tone, hair and clothing of you and your
buddy. You recall classroom conversations that have been generated by the portraits, conversations about how people
define who they are, how we perceive
each other, and how we might celebrate
and enjoy our diversity.
Motivating children is easy when they
perceive a genuine purpose for their
activities, such as decorating “their own”
classroom. Student-constructed displays
have the added power of being interesting to other students. When such displays have meaningful content, they are
also vehicles for learning. For example,
pairs of students can grapple with the
challenges of agreeing upon, and then
writing motivational statements that will
shape the tone of the classroom community. Apart from co-constructed word
lists, young learners can benefit from
displays that acknowledge interesting
people, places and things in their community: “H” might be for Halloween
or Hanukah, “M” for Mt. Rainier
or McDonalds. Posting such materials for all to see enables the teacher to
refer quickly to previous lessons and to address multiple ideas efficiently during
discussions.