Discover the priceless strength of diversity in education

Cultural awareness is our main weapon against serious issues that are linked to ignorance and prejudice in today’s society. Differences define us as a fundamental part of the humankind: everyone is unique and each of us is a source of mutual enrichment.

Valuing diversity in the educational field is the first step to enlarge our boundaries, in order to guarantee a wider and more complete vision of the world we live in. ​

​The latter edition of the course “Diversity in the classroom: teaching tolerance and overcoming prejudices and discrimination” took place in Palermo from 21/08/2022 to 27/08/2022. The participants came from all across Europe, with Monika from Germany, Breda, Patricia, Louise and Josephine from Ireland, Maria from Cyprus, Ewa, Dorota and Danuta from Poland, Edit and Gyula from Hungary, Noemi, Miriam, Leticia and Nuria from Spain.

​Through the sharing of personal experiences by each participant we built a safe place to start, in which we explored different methods to face the main issues that corcerned their schools.

Identity was our crucial starting point: recognize ourselves through the contact with others is the most important basis for building our social and cultural conscience, and we learnt it through amusing activities that involved creative brainstorm, roleplay, playing with methaphors and games about perceptions. 

​These activities helped us discovering how many different aspects hide in our inner selves. Each of us is composed by a beautiful range of colours: sometimes they can match others’ shades, otherwise they can create new combinations by meeting.

​Discovering identity was a fundamental tool to explore safely the social environment. The participants had the opportunity to analyze phenomena such as stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination. We discussed a lot about the main reasons of their existence and their outcomes in many social contexts, especially in a multicultural environment like the school.

​We also discovered the “healthy boundaries” of identity like rituals, relationships and restrictions that make us identify with a specific cultural context.

​Then we moved to the emotional matter, discovering the five pillars of socio-emotional learning: self-awareness, self-control, empathy, self motivation and social skills. Through the activities that involved emotional intelligence the participants also learnt how to deal with conflicts, exercising empathy in a healthy way. 

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During our meetings we also reflected about sensitive subjects like membership and inclusion, in order to recognize how it feels to be excluded and how difficult it is to include others into our dynamics. 

​On our last day together we shared individual experiences in creating an inclusive classroom, discovering the best practices to do it in the best way. 

​The depth of our conversations during this bright week taught us important lessons that will be printed in our minds wherever we’ll go, finally aware of the beauty of diversity. 

Discover more about this course here