Cultural Awareness for Shalom Community

The classroom today is not anything like it was even a few decades ago. We live in a global world where so many various cultures are represented even within our classrooms. Shalom Community is best reflected in the context of a multicultural community for when all cultures come together God is most accurately revealed. Thus, in order to achieve a multicultural Shalom Community, I propose that the first step as educators is to develop cultural competence . My hope for this chapter is that through it, teachers will be able to better recognize themselves, that is, better recognize the world and the culture from which they come, and, ultimately by doing so, create a safer place for the students. This chapter first considers Hofstede’s (2005) five cultural dimensions as a foundation for heightened cultural awareness. Then, this chapter maneuvers through four domains whereby teachers might create Shalom Community by communicating with the students. Communication requires four domains of intercultural communication competence . As Liu et al. (Introducing intercultural communication: Global cultures and contexts. Sage, Los Angeles 2015) described, the four domains include the following: (1) the knowledge component , (2) the affective component , (3) the psychomotor component , and (4) the situational component . In succeeding through these domains, cultural knowledge leads to a proactive creation of multicultural Shalom Community in the classrooms whereby once again, each student confidently recognizes himself, and is also recognized by others, as a bearer of God’s image.