how to teach for genuine cultural competency

A while ago while taking a walk I was pondering how to help students develop the ability to empathize with multiple perspectives, and, hopefully, the habit of doing so.

I thought about daily "perspective exercises" where the students would look at a picture of people from another culture doing something that might seem strange, then hear the explanation, and then try to imagine how the people in the picture would see "us." Simple example: people in Japan taking their shoes off to enter home or school. How might they see us, here in the classroom with our "outside shoes" on?

But this is too easy, perhaps even boring and predictable after a while. It also smacks too much of the type of simple-minded stuff my former cooperating teacher used to do.

So, maybe we could combine "perspective" with "current events," and have students respond to a particular news article by writing a few lines imagining the thoughts, goals, interests, etc. of different persons or groups involved in (or implied in) the story.

I have so many ideas for daily exercises, I could teach entire semesters composed only of daily exercises......hey.... there might actually be a decent idea in there somewhere...with students' short attention spans, interspersing little exercises could be a good way to break up the week and the class period... these kinds of things do seem to lower the stress level a bit...