Are Kids More Open to Cultural Differences Than Adults Think? What I Learned As An Elementary Classroom Teacher
Last October, on Faduma’s fifth day as a new second grader in my classroom, I leaned against the sink wiping down glue sticks and kept one eye on her snack table. Faduma and her family moved to our small Ohio town from Somalia just two weeks prior, and she’d brought canjeero that morning—soft, holey sourdough flatbread torn into pieces, with a small container of date paste for dipping.
I’d already had my “welcome new student” chat with the class, but I still tensed up when three of the kids sitting with her leaned in, craning their necks to see her lunch. I’d been a kid myself in this same school district, back when a Mexican American student brought tamales for lunch and got teased for 10 minutes about the “dirty corn husks.” I was already pushing off the sink to walk over when Mia, the girl who brings cheddar goldfish every single day, spoke first.
“That smells like my nana’s pizza dough but sweet,” she said. “What is it?”
What happened next wasn’t what I expected. Faduma tore off a small piece and held it out. “It’s canjeero. My mom makes it every Saturday. Try it.” By the time I finished wiping down the last glue stick, every kid at the table had a bite, and two had gone back for seconds. By recess, half the class had stopped by to ask what it was, and Faduma just kept sharing.
That moment stuck with me, because it got me asking the question I’ve been turning over ever since: are kids actually far more open to cultural differences than we, as adults, give them credit for?
A week later, I was at a parent coffee in the school library when the topic of inclusivity came up. Multiple parents said they were worried about raising kids to be kind around difference, that it felt like such a big, hard thing to teach these days. One mom said she avoids talking about different holidays or traditions at all because she’s scared she’ll get something wrong and mess it up. Listening to them talk, I thought back to Faduma’s snack time, and how I’d been just as guilty of assuming the worst. I’d gone into that day braced for conflict that never came.
A few weeks after that, I met with Faduma’s mom for a parent conference. She told me she’d sent Faduma to school that first week with a peanut butter sandwich, same as the other kids, because she was scared people would make fun of her food. Faduma had begged to bring canjeero that Friday, and she’d almost said no. She also told me she’d worried about Faduma wearing her hijab to school, after an incident at their old apartment complex where a kid pulled on it and laughed. But Faduma told her nothing but good things happened: the other girls ask to feel the sparkly fabric of her new ones, and ask to see pictures of her cousins back in Somalia.
It’s not that kids never act unkind around difference, of course. I’ve stepped in more than once to shut down rude comments over the years. But what I’ve noticed in 12 years of teaching second grade is that when kids are rude about something different, it’s almost always because an adult has already framed that difference as weird or wrong first. Most of the time, when kids encounter something new that’s part of another kid’s life, they’re just curious. They don’t carry the baggage of politics or past conflict or awkward mistakes that we carry.
The biggest change I’ve made in my classroom over the past year comes from that snack time observation, and it’s tiny, no big lesson plans required. First, I now pause 10 seconds before jumping in to mediate when kids are talking about someone’s different food, clothes, or tradition. Half the time, they’re just asking questions, not being rude, and they work it out themselves before I even need to say anything. Second, I don’t shame kids for asking blunt questions. If a kid says “why do you wear that on your head?” out loud, I don’t immediately hush them and apologize to the other kid. I just say “that’s a good question—do you want to answer that, [name]?” It gives the kid who’s being asked control, and it doesn’t make the difference feel like a taboo topic you can’t talk about.
I also added a small wooden shelf by my classroom door a few months ago, called it the share shelf. Any kid can bring a small, everyday thing from their family’s routine that’s important to them— a packet of their favorite snack from their family’s home country, a sticker from a trip to see grandma overseas, a photo of a holiday their family celebrates that we don’t talk about at school. No required presentations, no assigned projects. If anyone’s curious, they can ask the kid about it. It’s low effort, it’s low pressure, and it’s full of all kinds of things I’d never think to put on a bulletin board for heritage month.
Last week, a new boy joined our class from Kyiv, and he speaks almost no English. Yesterday he brought a container of varenyky his grandma made to snack time. Before I could even finish taking attendance at my desk, two kids from Faduma’s table pulled an extra chair next to him, pointed at his container, and smiled. He pulled out a piece and handed it to both of them. I kept writing attendance, and let them talk it out with gestures and smiles.
I still worry sometimes, just like every parent and teacher. I still mess up and jump in too fast when I think something’s going to go wrong. But more and more, I think the hardest part of helping kids be comfortable with difference isn’t the work we have to do with them. It’s unlearning our own assumptions that they’ll be judgmental, and getting out of their way. They’re already way ahead of us, more often than not.
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