Embracing Diversity

Have you been searching for a way to get your students involved in campus events? Have you ever struggled with including diversity lessons in your program? Try this idea to incorporate campus events into your lessons.

I spent many semesters trying to figure out a way to get my students to appreciate the diverse world around them before they head into the community to complete their practicum. I have used videos, articles, various interactive classroom activities, and discussions to enlighten them. While all of these tools have been useful, I wanted to step it up a notch and incorporate something bigger into this lesson. Then the light bulb turned on as I started to get emails and saw publications around campus about various diversity events. I decided that this was the missing piece and what my students needed to connect with diverse groups.


I created a final assignment for all of our second semester students to be completed by the last week of the semester. The requirements were to attend at least one diversity event on campus and share their thoughts on what they learned about a specific culture and how attending the event changed their thoughts.  If additional research was required to explain what it is they saw or heard, they needed to include this is their assignment as well. My requirements for the paper were to describe the event, what they learned and how it has prepared them for working with diverse patients in the health care setting. They also need to include at least one outside source.

Linking to Employability Skills

This assignments helps students to prepare for serving our community in the best way that they can. It helps to open their eyes and minds to working with patients that are different from them, not only in their cultures and beliefs, but also in their thought processes, treatment choices, and how they may wish to be treated.

In health care we talk about treating the whole person.

In this assignment, students are taking a step to further understand the whole person and the need to continually educate themselves about the world around them. This will help them to better prepare how to serve our increasingly diverse community and value individual differences and abilities.


Leave a Reply


WordPress.com Logo


Google photo


Twitter picture


Facebook photo


Connecting to %s