Our students bring their own unique cultures and perspectives to our classrooms each and every day. How we incorporate that in our day to day classrooms can make our break the relational capacity we have with our students. That's why becoming a culturally competent and culturally responsive teacher is so very important.
The term "culturally relevant teaching" was created by Gloria Ladson-Billings (1994), who says that it is "a pedagogy that empowers students intellectually, socially, emotionally, and politically by using cultural referents to impart knowledge, skills, and attitudes." Zaretta Hammond adds that culturally relevant teaching is the process of developing cultural responsiveness (2015). Hammond further says, "It begins when a teacher recognizes the cultural capital and tools students of color bring to the classroom. She is then able to respond to students' use of these cultural learning tools positively by noticing, naming, and affirming when students use them in the service of learning."
The National Education Association does a great job of defining cultural competence:
"Cultural competence is having an awareness of one's own cultural identity and views about difference, and the ability to learn and build on the varying cultural and community norms of students and their families. It is the ability to understand the within-group differences that make each student unique, while celebrating the between-group variations that make our world a tapestry."
Culturally relevant teaching strategies and becoming culturally competent are critically important if schools are to close the achievement and opportunity gap for all students in the increasingly diverse student populations we serve. But it requires teachers to step out of our comfort zones and change our ways of thinking about students and about how best to teach them.
Below are three strategies that can help you ramp up your instructional strategies and start you on your journey to becoming a culturally competent teacher.
Recognize that you might carry stereotypes and preconceived notions about students based on their perceived identity. Counteract those stereotypes and notions by getting to know your students as individuals.
Your students are all coming from their own unique upbringing and with their own cultural traditions and norms. This makes it very important to learn all you can about your students. Interviews, surveys, questionnaires, and class discussions are all ways you can get to know your students. But nothing beats a good old-fashioned one on one conversation. Ask your students what they are interested in, how they most enjoy learning, what kinds of movies and games they enjoy, anything and everything. I bet that the resulting information will also help you discover each student's learning style. Nothing beats open communication for breaking down barriers.
Some strategies to help you reach all students can start in the way you greet them each day - make sure to pronounce their names clearly and correctly. Unfortunately there are many stories of teachers who have difficulty pronouncing a name and then just shorten it up to make it easier. Challenge yourself to pronounce each child's name clearly and correctly, avoid creating nicknames or shortening them if you are unable to initially pronounce them. Students appreciate it when you work to get their names correct. This is a sign of respect that we should extend to all our students. After greeting them, engage your students in conversations about their lives or issues that are important to them. If they are involved in sports, ask them how their team is doing. if they are in clubs, ask them what the clubs are doing.
Be inclusive in your references. Do not assume that your references will be understood by everyone (e.g., saying, "The igneous rock in question was bigger than a tennis ball" assumes that everyone knows how big a tennis ball is and that may not be the case.) In my own classroom I bumped into this very challenge last year. I referred to "flower beds" and realized that most of the kids in the class were looking at me with puzzled looks. Finally Bianca raised her hand and asked, "What's a flower bed?" Talk about stopping me in my tracks! Flower beds seemed a universal term to me, given my upbringing by a mother devoted to gardening. But, in the high desert and in one of the lowest SES communities in my state, flower beds were certainly not the norm. So we backed up, I explained what a flower bed was, pulled up pictures to show what they could look like, then we moved on - lesson (to me) learned! In addition to caution around your references, avoid sarcasm as it may offend some students. Not all cultures appreciate sarcasm the way American mainstream media does, so be aware of those cultural differences.
In Part Two of this three-part series we'll explore more strategies to create a culturally relevant classroom.
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