Age
Attitude toward learning
Career goals
Class structure
Community involvement
Cultural group
Dexterity and coordination
Employment status
Ethnicity
Expectations for course
Eyesight
Family situation
Gender
Hearing
Height
Industry experience
Languages or dialects spoken
Learning disabilities
Learning style
Level of confidence
Looks
Math anxiety
Passive/active personality
Physical strength
Political preferences
Race or ethnicity
Reason for being in our programs
Reason for being in school
Religion
Sexual orientation
Skill level
Socio-economic status
Travel, hotel or dining experience
Veteran status
Wealth/ poverty
Weight
Work situation
Writing skills

With all these differences, it is sometimes amazing how we accomplish our teaching goals. However, recognizing them can make teaching easier and more exciting. Ignoring them disvalues our students, makes it harder for them, and does not help the profession grow.

The key steps in promoting and honoring the range of differences in your classroom involve: one, building a culture of recognizing the differences in a positive manner, and two, applauding a wide variety of differences.

Building a Culture of Difference
The first step in building a culture of honoring differences involves making them public and acceptable. The environment that you create by mentioning differences, noticing them in a positive manner, and encouraging everyone to own their differences makes a big difference in the approach that other students will take to realizing and celebrating differences.

Although many of our students—not all—are members of the Millennial Generation, and therefore more accepting of differences in general, many of our students still have difficulty with individuals who are different from them. Anyone who has used project teams or learning groups in his or her classroom understands the challenge of having everyone working together when they are not all the same.

Creating a culture that recognizes differences in a positive manner is a key element of good teaching and an important strategy for making every student feel safe and secure. It requires establishing a teaching and learning environment where each student can admit and feel supported in recognizing his or her differences. It requires thinking of the policies and procedures that you establish, the words that you use and the actions that you display. It means using interactive activities, demonstrations, lectures and discussions in ways that recognize and affirm differences among students like the ones mentioned above.

It requires modeling a positive recognition of differences, which we can do by telling anecdotes and describing work situations where differences made a positive contribution. It means showing your openness by using differences—rather than counting off—to group students for project teams, cooking pairs, dining-room groups and small group discussions. It means learning students’ actual names and carefully pronouncing them, especially when they are not in your native language. It means encouraging alternative ways of doing things and illustrating them in your feedback, critiques or classroom instructions. It means relishing and rewarding different approaches to problem solving, completing assignments and other aspects of learning so that students see the value of many ways of doing things.

Applauding Differences
The second strategy involves applauding differences by mentioning them in public, complementing students who have done things in a different manner and accomplished the desired result. (In culinary classes, this strategy takes careful monitoring because some students think they can do things in any manner, not recognizing that allumette, oblique cut and julienne have specific meanings and that there are well-established reasons for doing some things, like puff pastry, braise, accounting, table setting and fish fabrication a certain way.)

Often, however, there is more than one way to do something well, and we can recognize the different ways publically and praise students for doing them using an alternative strategy. We often push students to do things our way without considering that there may be many thoughtful ways to do something. Modeling the reality that there are several ways to do something—such as tempering chocolate, restoring a broken hollandaise, preparing mental mise in place or making pâté—shows students that differences can be valued in the culinary arts.

From the examples you provide and the public praise you give to different ways of doing things—while recognizing where different ways are not helpful—you will help all the students in your classes learn to recognize and value different approaches, different strategies and different situations. That makes the classroom more welcoming to all students. Role-modeling different approaches to learning new concepts or techniques, or pointing out various ways of presenting food on a plate, helps create a recognition that differences count and can even contribute to better results.

Summary
Thank you for reading this column about recognizing differences and diversity; next month, we will talk about honoring differences. If you have suggestions for other topics or practices you want to share about diversity in the classroom, send them to me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., and I will include them in future Mayo’s Clinics.

Dr. Fred Mayo, CHE, CHT, is a clinical professor at New York University and a frequent presenter at CAFÉ events nationwide.