Multi culturalism in the classroom and school in Ireland today

 I have strong views of allowing to make the art room environment a more personal experience for each pupil and looking at the community section I see experimental and innovative ideas that I think are great for the non interested learner or for pupils from different social and religious backgrounds, attending the lectures on Multi-culturalism in UCC in one of the lectures we were asked how many students had non nationals in their classroom ?

Unsurprisingly everyone in the lecture in the raised their hands. Six years previously I could honestly say that in my own year we would have had two non nationals in my class, but now especially in my 1st year class I got a high number of non nationals in the art classroom with one pupil in particular who has very broken English and although does the task's set out by me I am very aware to be more visual in my teaching methods in the first year class in comparison to my other 2nd and 4th year classes.

Facts were given to us in one of the lectures it stated some of the following figures and findings :

The Changing Landscape of Irish society

    

•  The republic of Ireland has experienced an unprecedented increase in immigration, with over 540,000 people migrating to Ireland between 1995 and 2005 to form established immigrant communities. 
• Little attention has been qualitatively focused on the needs and experiences of younger migrants and migrant children.

A need for services and facilities was needed within Ireland and more importantly the development of educational needs, pupils coming to the education system in Ireland had little of no English and where put into classrooms with fully abled Irish pupils, one had to take into account of how the pupil for example from Lithuania was to come into the Irish system having broken English, and little or no idea on Irish customs and way of living, then must over come social issues like integration into the classroom and 'fitting in' overcoming the language barrier and try their best to mix with children of their age and learn through a dormant language that isn't their native language.

Facts that were also given in the UCC lectures include the following based on religious backgrounds:

RELIGION

• 95% of Irish Primary schools are denominational in character (92% are Catholic)- Last year's 2006 census showed that migration is having a major impact on religious trends across the state....recent arrivals from Poland,Brazil,Philippines, the number of Catholics increased by 218,000 between 2002-06 albeit with an overall fall in its share from 88.4% of all religious followers to 86.8%. The Catholic Church has more than 100 foreign- language services in place across Ireland.
• The Muslim population has doubled since 2002 to 32,500 and now Islam is now the third largest religious group in the country...there are now more Muslims than Presbyterians (23,000) or Methodists (12,000) in Ireland now.
• The biggest increase of all was recorded among members of the Orthodox community,which doubled in size to 20,800 between 2002 and 2004, thanks mainly to new comers from central and Eastern Europe.

One must also take into consideration the pupils beliefs and how it may affect their day to day activities within the school environment. Having identified pupils from my different classes I am aware one pupil is a Buddhist. the school allows this pupil to leavee his classroom discreetly and pray at certain times of the day. Ive witnessed this pupil who although I don't teach leave his classroom and go to the reflection room and takes time to pray and then back to class. I think its great that he has the chance to have a normal school routine and still manage to pray and for the school and class to welcome it.