Globalisation and the spread of English in the modern world

Dealing with culture clashes

When hiring teachers to teach in an international school, they are coming in to a classroom where many cultures might be coming together. For many of your teachers, this may be their first experience in such a culturally diverse classroom. And an international classroom can pose a unique set of challenges, including culture gaps or clashes. Sometimes, these differences can even make more culturally charged classroom conversations difficult, including racism, gender inequality, and other sensitive topics.

Although some differences may arise from time to time, a diverse student population is something to celebrate. So what can a school’s administration do to bridge these gaps, should they occur?
Read below for some tips on how to support your teachers in dealing with these difficult conversations and culture gaps.
Empower your teachers through great training
There are so many tools that teachers can be offered in order to handle these difficult situations when they arise, and many of these can cost very little. In fact, sometimes, it’s a matter of offering up a mentor to each new teacher to walk them through possible classroom scenarios and give them tips to diffuse any situations that could arise.
Be as specific as possible
A good starting place when you’re offering onboarding training and sensitivity training to your teachers is to be as specific to your community as possible. Don’t offer generalizations — speak specifically to what issues your teachers may deal with. Teachers working in Saudi Arabia will have different conversations with their students than teachers in Korea.
By offering teachers community-specific training, they will likely feel better equipped to engage in their new community using local communication norms.
Encourage teachers to lead by example
This is something important to communicate to your teachers. Students will look to their teacher as a guide for how to conduct themselves in the classroom. If teachers model inclusivity and respect for cultural differences, students may be more inclined to mirror this attitude. Teachers need to be encouraged to take a leadership role.
The classroom should be a safe space for learning
Just as some students shouldn’t feel bullied by others’ opinions, all students should feel free to speak their minds in a culturally sensitive manner.
Teachers can be encouraged to use engaging language cues in their classroom in order to prompt other students to get involved, including, “Interesting opinion. Does anyone else have a thought?” Even encouraging teachers to ask their students to justify their answers by asking ‘why’ can model for students a more inquisitive and curious conversation model.
Give your teachers the practical skills, knowledge and strategies needed to successfully deal with increasing diversity in their classroom with Culturally Responsive Teaching, Teach Away’s online professional development course for educators. Contact us about a special discounted rate for your institution today. Work styles vary wildly from one country to the next, which can make global expansion challenging. But all companies, regardless of region or dialect, have one thing in common: people.
American work habits can seem downright oppressive when viewed from afar.
Various reports and studies show that we Americans experience a more burdensome work week than many of our peers abroad, spending interminable hours at the office, wolfing down lunch at our desks, letting vacation days expire unused, and answering emails after hours and on weekends.

It’s practically the dark ages compared to the rest of the civilized world, where 20 to 30 days of vacation are the norm, the maximum length of the work week often is set by law, paid parental leave is mandated, and some countries have even tried to legislate the “right to disconnect” for workers besieged by after-hour emails and phone calls.

This divide between America’s doggedly industrious approach on the one hand, and the less-relentless global approach on the other, might make it seem that a corporate culture developed for a U.S. company would prove a poor fit beyond our borders.
But that’s not necessarily so.
Yes, there are differences between the U.S. and the rest of the planet, but there are also commonalities. In every corner of the world you can find people who want to serve others, do high-quality work, collaborate closely with others and have fun while doing it. Where they live or where they’re from has nothing to do with those traits; they come from the person’s character, not his or her nationality.
I experienced this firsthand as a founder and former CEO of Mustang Engineering, a Houston-based company that from 2005 to 2014 opened several international offices. Our first was in Woking, England, about 30 miles southwest of London. Within the next few years, we added offices in Melbourne and Perth, Australia; Mumbai, India; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Bogota, Colombia; Al-Khobar, Saudi Arabia; and Norway.
That’s a lot of different cultures around the world that needed to absorb our corporate culture. ortunately, certain principles that make for a winning corporate culture are universal, whether you are in Malaysia or Australia, Norway or India. How so? Because they all relate to people, and people are the crux of any organization’s success. A few of those principles include:
• Open communication is critical. Always encourage employees to speak up if they spot a problem or have a suggestion. A corporate culture that promotes such open communication can work well anywhere in the world because it spurs people who have a different take on things to share their thoughts. If employees feel comfortable speaking out, that can help a U.S. company operating in a foreign land avoid missteps.