Are Kids More Open To Cultural Differences Than We Think? What I Learned As A Third Grade Teacher
Last month, I stood in the back of my third grade classroom during our annual International Food Share, crumpling a granola bar wrapper in my pocket and mentally running through my talking points. The year before, a 7 year old had loudly announced that his classmate’s kimchi smelled like “rotten cabbage” and the kid who brought it had sat down in the corner and wouldn’t share anything else all day. I’d spent 20 minutes after school talking through why that comment hurt, and I was determined not to let that happen again. That week, we’d just welcomed Javi, a new student who’d moved to our town from Oaxaca just three weeks prior, and he’d brought a big tupperware of tamales his grandma had made for the share. I watched him hover by the table, twisting the hem of his soccer jersey, and got ready to step in the second someone said the wrong thing.
Then Mia, who always brings homemade lumpia from her mom’s side of the family, wandered over first. “What’s that?” she asked, nodding at the tupperware. “It’s mole tamales,” Javi said, quiet. “My grandma makes it with chocolate. That’s what we eat for birthdays.” Mia grabbed a tiny bite off the end of a plastic fork, chewed, and her eyes got big. “That’s sweet and spicy,” she said. “Can I have another whole one? This is way better than the canned tamales my dad buys at the grocery store.”
Within two minutes, half the class was crowded around Javi’s tupperware. Leo, whose family only eats tacos from the fast food place down the street, tried a bite and said “Whoa, you can put chocolate in sauce? That’s so cool.” No one said it was weird. No one made a face. I stood there with my pre-planned talking points still in my head, and realized I’d been the only one expecting a problem.
That same week, I’d had a parent-teacher conference where two parents asked why we spent so much time talking about different family traditions anyway. “They’re just little kids,” one said. “They don’t care about all that stuff. It just confuses them.” That interaction got me thinking about the question I see all the time in parenting and education groups: are kids really more open to cultural differences than we adults think? After three years of teaching third grade, and a dozen awkward missteps on my part, the answer I keep landing on is yes—mostly because they haven’t had time to learn all the awkwardness and bias we carry around.
I used to be just as guilty as any parent of over-planning these moments. I’d pull aside a new student from another country before a share day and tell them “if anyone says anything rude, just come tell me, okay?” which I now realize just makes them feel like everyone is going to be rude before anyone even says anything. I’d open every share activity with a 5 minute speech about how “we’re all different and that’s great” which just frames difference as a big, special lesson instead of just a normal part of daily life.
The first concrete shift I made, after that tamale day, was changing what I say before these activities. Instead of opening with a preachy reminder to be polite, I just say what the food is and who made it. “Javi brought tamales his grandma made when she visited last week, who wants a bite?” That’s it. It frames Javi’s food as just another contribution to the day, not something that needs a special buffer. For parents at home, that looks the exact same: if you’re trying a new recipe from a culture that’s not your own, you don’t need to give a half-hour lesson before dinner. You just say “I found this recipe online, let’s try it.” If your kid asks why it’s different from what you usually make, you answer the question simply, you don’t make it a big, loaded deal.
Another thing I stopped doing is shushing kids when they ask blunt questions. Adults get so embarrassed when a kid says “why does that lady wear that covering on her head?” or “why does your grandma talk funny?” that we jump in to shut them up immediately. But shushing tells kids that difference is something shameful, something you can’t talk about. Now, I just pause and let the person the question is directed at answer. If they don’t want to, I answer simply: “That’s called a hijab, it’s part of her religion, just like we go to church on Sundays if our family is Christian.” Nine times out of ten, the kid nods and goes back to what they were doing. They just wanted an answer, not a conflict.
I still have moments where I slip back into my old habits. Last week, we had a new student join us from Syria, and I caught myself asking her ahead of time if she’d be comfortable sharing a little about her old school, putting all that pressure on her to be the “face” of her culture before she even knew anyone’s names. She shook her head no, and I just said “No problem at all, whenever you’re ready, if you want to share anything, you can.” An hour later, she showed the kid next to her a picture of her cat back in Damascus, and that was that. No big lesson, no pressure, just a kid sharing a thing she likes.
I don’t have a perfect neat ending to this. There are still awkward moments, still kids who say rude things, just like there are still adults who say rude things. But more often than not, the problem isn’t the kid’s reaction. It’s our expectation that they’ll be closed off, that difference will confuse them or upset them, that we have to teach them to be open when they’re already halfway there before we even start the lesson.
Right now, Javi sits at the lunch table every day, and three different kids ask him for bites of his grandma’s mole whenever he brings it. He doesn’t hover by the table anymore. I still leave my overly prepared talking points in my desk most days, and it’s worked out better than any formal lesson plan I ever wrote. I’m still unlearning my own assumptions, and that’s okay. That’s part of the work too.
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