Cultural Diversity

Recognizing that every individual has their own personal culture is an important thing to do when working with any group of people, but as a peer mentor it is vital.  Not every student you mentor will have the same background as you even know they are all from Iowa.  One of the best ways to recognize and to appreciate an individual culture is to first identify your own.  Josh had a great activity to start the process of recognize parts of your individual culture by narrowing down what values or beliefs are most important to you.  I did this by thinking of how the values or beliefs have affected me in my life then when we narrowed them down more I thought about how one value could encompass another. 


The ism's activity that Chelsee lead was a little more difficult for me, because I try really hard to be aware of these thing in my daily life.  I will not lie though there are times where I notice I have some ism's in my life.  The important thing is to recognize when the ism's you hold are creating a negative situation and to address that in a positive way that allows you to grow as a person.


Cultural diversity is an important topic for everyone to learn and it is a process that you need to continue to develop throughout your life.  It is not an easy topic to discuss at times and makes many people uncomfortable, but those are the people that need it the most.