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Cultural Curriculum Chat with Jebeh Edmunds
Welcome to the Cultural Curriculum Chat Podcast—an inclusive space for educators, DEI practitioners, and all individuals eager to foster diversity and understanding! If you're seeking a vibrant, authentic podcast to guide you in implementing Multicultural Education, look no further. Are you yearning for inspiration to cultivate a truly inclusive classroom community? Join us on a journey filled with insightful resources, practical tips, and a touch of humor, all led by the knowledgeable educator, Jebeh Edmunds.
Our podcast is designed to uplift and empower you, offering a blend of expertise and laughter to spark creativity and engagement in your educational endeavors. Tune in to discover a wealth of valuable insights and strategies that will ignite your passion for inclusive teaching practices and multicultural learning.
Embark on this enriching experience with us, and together we'll champion diversity, inspire change, and create welcoming spaces for all. Subscribe now to stay connected, join the conversation, and access more empowering content. Let's make a difference, one episode at a time! Thank you for being a part of our mission.
Cultural Curriculum Chat with Jebeh Edmunds
Season 7 Episode #28 Fostering Empathy: Virtual Reality in Cultural Competence Training
In this episode of The Cultural Curriculum Chat, host Jebeh Edmunds explores how Virtual Reality (VR) can be a powerful tool to build empathy and cultural competence in classrooms and workplaces.
Imagine walking through a bustling marketplace in another country—where even greetings and eye contact feel unfamiliar. VR offers this kind of immersive perspective-taking, helping learners recognize assumptions and practice inclusive responses. But, as Jebeh emphasizes, VR is not a cure-all—it’s most effective when paired with skilled facilitation, reflection, and real-world action.
You’ll also learn how to use VR safely and ethically, with practical tips for opt-in alternatives, accessibility supports, and ensuring psychological safety for all participants.
🎧 Tune in to discover how you can harness VR to create meaningful, budget-friendly learning experiences that bring cultural competence to life.
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Welcome back to the Cultural Curriculum Chat. I'm your host, Jebeh Edmunds, and today we're exploring how virtual reality VR can foster empathy and strengthen cultural competence in schools and workplaces, plus safe, budget, friendly ways to try it. Picture this, your team. Quote unquote, walks through a marketplace in another country, you notice greetings, spacing, eye contact, all different from your norm. Back in the room, people say, I didn't realize how my habits read. In another context, that's vr at its best perspective. Taking that you can feel. VR is a practice space. It's not a fix. It helps learners experience a context, notice assumptions and rehearse inclusive responses, but it must be paired with facilitation, reflection, and real world action. So let's start with safety first and ethics. Okay. No one should be forced to wear a headset, provide a 360 video on a laptop, or a narrative walkthrough as an equivalent experience. Sometimes that could lead to dangerous situations. So even if you have a video or seeing a YouTube video with somebody's GoPro through that same kind of an exercise that you can put up on your Promethean board or your smart board for your students or your staff accessibility, make sure that you have captions, transcripts, volume control, and breaks. Because sometimes you even have to watch for motion sensitivity, you know? I couldn't even get through Mario Kart when I was a kid because I got so dizzy. So think about how you can be better accessible for all of your students and staff. And psychological safety is a must, you know, provide brief. Context about what's inside the experience. Avoid trauma reenactments. Okay. And make sure that environment is positive so all people can see people in a positive and not stereotypical light. Privacy, vet your vendors data practices. That is first and foremost. Avoid accounts for minors when possible, and no recording faces without consent. And again, get consent from your school district and look at their policies as well. That also is very important. Some great. VR scenarios for cultural competence. Look at cross-cultural greetings and norms. Time and space, how people value that, how they value eye contact. And think about service interactions. What it's like to go to a clinic or a different school office, the day to day of a school day, um, or retail. What are those in interactions with? And think about that with language and access barriers. What are the barriers? What could students pick out that would be a barrier? Either language or access wise, and think about those bias micro moments with branching choices to practice repair, acknowledge, repair, change the behavior. Okay. And heritage site or a community visit, that visits, centers, contemporary voices and doesn't center the stereotype. Okay, so greetings, service interactions. What is the barrier to the language or the access? Think about those micro moments. Acknowledge, repair, change the behavior. And what is a community visit or a heritage site that has contemporary voices to those places that isn't stereotypical? So I want you to try these three things. Next week pick your budget. I know sometimes budgets can be tight, but first of all, just find free low tech. Use a 360 degree video in a browser. Remember, make sure it is compliant with your district policies and your organization policies, and pair with a notice name. Reflect protocol. Okay? What did you notice? What can you. Point out and how did we reflect going forward? Okay. Now if you have something that is a little up in your budget, you could probably do three to five viewers. Rotate it in small groups, assign roles, explore observer note taker for that one. And if you have a healthy, big budget for your classroom or your organization, maybe get a full class set. Preload. Of course the approved apps by your district and maybe do three to five minutes per scene and remember to clean devices between uses and set a seated mode to reduce motion sickness. Even having a guide, having someone that is their hand that isn't on a set to guide them safely around the classroom so they could be their extra pair of eyes that. Does not have the viewer on their head. Another thing that you can do when you are doing a mini lesson, you could of course start with your pre-learning, your goals, your norms the path that you're going to do, and taking deep breaths before you put the headset on, or use the 360 degree screen, but always use that prompt. What did you notice? What do you wonder? And then when you do that exercise, remember no more than three to five minutes, we don't want our kiddos to get too dizzy. I want you to debrief, using their feelings, facts, frames, and their futures. I love that. Methodology, feelings, name the emotions without any debate. Just what are you feeling? Initial reactions to things, facts. What did you see? What did you hear? Frame the cultural frame, which cultural lenses might be shaping that behavior, even if it's not your own, but what lenses are you seeing that could shape that particular behavior and the future? What inclusive action are you going to try? Moving forward, and then I love a good think pair share. I want you to, towards the end, commit four minutes. I want you to pair and share your real life scenario this week. What are you going to do for this week coming forward? Getting that future into action is what I love. Gotta let the kids commit, or even your colleague commit to see. Now, if you are the facilitator, I want you to use this language. There's more than one right? Interpretation. Remember, let's collect those perspectives, and I want you to think of, there's no wrong answer here. There's multiple. Answers, multiple perspectives. If harmed happened in that choice, how could we prepare that harm? How could we repair it? And what support or saying would make this inclusive choice easier in the moment? Let's practice that. Okay. Now I also want you to continue to think about the metrics and how much they matter. Knowledge, what terms, what norms across context do I want my student or my colleague to know? Empathy. Okay. Self-report your own prompts. I can have a perspective take when norms are different than mine. Okay, the behavior I've observed, inclusive language, what repair steps are used in this meeting or this classroom and with our systems. What policy tweaks can I do? Do I need to translate differently? Do I need to have different types of accessible? Things in place. Do I need to have a quiet space for prayer or meditative practice or just to decompress and get some grounding in my classroom or my workspace, and maybe I need to have some more flexible deadlines. All of those can go in. Now you know me. I love a good pitfall and fix so. We could call this instead of a cool field trip. Maybe tie it to our cool current voices. What's happening right now in real time? What local action can we do, right? And we want to get rid of the savior narrative. All right. We want to center the community that you're observing and the agency, and not the rescue, not what can we do to do better? What can be done? How do we save this community? I wanted to center around the community and what they are doing and have that at the center. Now, another thing I've noticed is the overexposure. We wanna keep it. Short sessions. Okay. Like I said, no more than three to five minutes max, and I want you to be clear. And content with your notes, okay? And debrief every single time. Remember, feelings, facts, frames, and futures. You've got your observer, you have your note taker, and you have your explorer and maybe doing multiple things. I want you to have multiple scenarios, so making sure every student or every member in your workforce has a chance too. Be each of those three roles. Okay? So I want you to pick one micro action that you can do today. I'm gonna give you three options. Yes. Your growth being generous today. Three options. I want you to add an opt-in statement or alternatives to your lesson plan. Okay? Have them opt in, make them feel like they are a part of their learning. Number two, I want you to create a one page debrief guide. Feelings, facts, frames, and future. Have a debrief, create that you can do it. And then I want you to schedule a follow up practice, maybe role play or a repair script for the students to talk about a common bias moment that they notice either in the video or that they notice in their own interaction. So I want you to pick one of those micro actions, and I want you to put that into practice educator or facilitator in the office. Now, do you want plug and play supports? My common core aligned multicultural lesson plans are for you and I also have self-paced mini courses, cultural competency, and being an active ally and code switching 1 0 1. They include checklists, activities, reflection prompts.