SOUTH PORTLAND, Maine — An elementary school in South Portland is seeing a much more diverse school population, so first-grade teachers are trying to teach their students about diversity and help them learn about each other.
"I like to learn about different people who have different cultures than me, I like to learn about different holidays," first-grade students at Kaler Elementary School told NEWS CENTER Maine.
"I sort of feel like a little bit unworthy sometimes because it's such an honor to have students have their first experience with learning in this country," Kaler Elementary first-grade teacher Rachel Duddy said.
Duddy and her co-teacher Angela Corcoran said the diversity in their classrooms is growing each year.
"Teaching and learning looked different, [now] we are using multiple languages, we are using google translate a lot, we're welcoming new greetings every morning," Corcoran said.
The teachers said that just because someone looks different or speaks a different language doesn't mean that they still can't learn, too.
"Because a person who learns in Portuguese, that doesn't make them less smart than someone who learns in English, they just need to receive the information in a different way," Duddy said.
That's why Duddy and Corcoran have all their class instructions available in English, Portuguese, and Spanish.
Not only are these students learning from their teachers, but the whole classroom is learning from each other.
"We had a kiddo a couple days ago, we were reading about homes around the world and he raised his hand and said, 'That's what my home looked like,' and he was able to teach all of us, including myself and Ms. Duddy, about homes and how it's different than homes we have here," Corcoran said.