Complementary Cultures Please respond to the following:

• Describe a time in your life in which you were engaged in a situation with someone of a different culture and how those differences complemented one another.
• Now consider that you are designing a course with a teacher leader from another culture.    In that your cultural backgrounds are different, communicate to this teacher leader your ideas about how to organize the course.  

Peer Response

This was a college experience, my freshman year. I met my roommate for the first time, and this is when I saw and enjoyed the culture difference. I have always love Chinese food, but I had never seen a Chinese movie and she had never seen a movie with so much action like we see in the Southwest Mississippi. Her study habits were great and I must say they rubbed off on me. We became best friends and we both graduated Summa Cum Lauda. I had never studied in such an effective and efficient way before. I still use some of the techniques that she shared with me so many years ago. 

The lack of cultural understanding can easily disrupt classroom learning.  If I was designing a course with a teacher leader from another culture the first thing, I would do is to try to learn all I could about the cultural background and embrace it. I would use information that I am familiar with from experience and the unfamiliar information I would collaborate with the teacher to identify the strengths and of the learner cultural background and use an many curriculum and technologies to help connect the students with the information so that they can explore new ideas and synthesize the course information