The classrooms in America today are changing in significant ways. As many typical teachers look at their students, they frequently see a picture much different from the images of their childhood. Today, one in three children nationwide is from an ethnic or racial minority group, one in seven speaks a language other than English at home, and one in 15 was born outside the United States. This increased diversity in racial, cultural, linguistic, and economic backgrounds among the student population is one of the greatest challenges facing teachers in this new century. But, it is also an asset for our region.

Each day, our region welcomes nearly 1,500 new adult residents to the area. Because of its geographical location, Florida has become a hub for international business and tourism. This growth has resulted, in large part, from recent massive immigration to Florida’s favorable climate and proximity to the Caribbean and Latin America.

Currently, there are over 150 languages and dialects spoken by Florida’s school-aged population. Spanish is the predominant other language, followed by Haitian Creole, Portuguese, French, Vietnamese and Chinese. Additionally, high student mobility puts enormous stress on schools. Services developed for one population—for example, limited-English-proficient students—may suddenly become unnecessary, as many of its users move in the middle of the semester. Furthermore, even attempts to monitor school performance become meaningless if the student population tested one year has largely changed by the next. But our unique ethnic make-up can be a source of enrichment rather than a source of conflict and divisiveness in the way we educate our children.

The Census 2000 figures show that Hispanics in Florida total 2.7 million, or 17 percent of the state population. In an expected development, Hispanics officially surpassed blacks as the largest minority group in the state. The average Hispanic growth in Central Florida soared even higher— averaging a 152-percent increase across the area. Osceola experienced the largest increase—294 percent—for a total of nearly 561,000 Hispanics. In Orange County public schools alone, Hispanic students came up to nearly 25 percent of the enrollment; and in several years, they will make up the largest minority student group in the county.

Diversity is not something new, and diversity is not something that is going to be solved today. Even in classrooms in which all the students are white, issues of diversity of thought and action arise. To adequately attend to cultural diversity in the classroom, teachers must look first at their own cultural backgrounds and understand how their biases affect their interactions with students; then teachers can examine the backgrounds and needs of the student population to understand their students’ cultural differences.

Teachers can provide all students with opportunities to be successful learners. The key is giving them a chance. The challenge to the teacher is being able to consistently recognize and value the creative ways that students express themselves and to use these actions, words or habits to talk about diversity issues. By encouraging students to retain and develop their home languages, schools can promote bilingualism and biliteracy for all students. In enriching the learning opportunities for students from diverse backgrounds, our region can secure the development of a multilingual, global workforce.

At the recent myregion.org’s interactive forums, the topics of Education and Demographics/Diversity and their impact on our region were studied. It was concluded that creating an inclusive community throughout the region can, perhaps, best be addressed through regional diversity-awareness efforts involving leaders positioned to influence the direction, quantity and rate of change within their organizations, communities and the public-at-large. You may access the Workshop notes on these and other sessions by logging on to the Document Center of www.myregion.org.