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Culturally responsive teaching is a profound pedagogical shift in education that educators are continuously working on to gain more connections to its depth. Culturally responsive teaching has many dimensions with a foundational focus on providing each and every student from any cultural background a responsible, rigorous, relevant, and in-depth education connected to their lives, backgrounds and experiences. It capitalizes on the assets all students bring to the classroom and the belief that all students, despite their backgrounds and experiences, can achieve at high levels. In order to be masters of culturally responsive teaching, we need to constantly reflect on and re-define our teaching values and the components that relate to culturally responsive teaching. Culture, Introspection and Awareness Wikipedia defines culture as “an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups.” Therefore, whether you have a class full of students from different races and ethnic groups or whether you have a class full of students from the same race and ethnic group, you still have different cultures within your classroom and you still need to be a culturally responsive educator. In order to be culturally responsive educators, we first need to understand ourselves, our values, beliefs, and behaviors based on how we were socialized. To understand ourselves, we need to engage in ongoing transparent introspection in the way we view others, especially our students. Two questions to help guide introspections are: "Am I allowing my cultural experiences and socialization to cloud the way I see others and their abilities?" and "Am I truly accepting of other cultures and their valued place in this world or is this just something I project and make myself believe I do?” Genuine self-reflection allows us to be transparent and brutally honest with ourselves. You do not have to share these thoughts with anyone; all you have to do is reflect, acknowledge and be honestly aware of your beliefs, values, and outlook. Awareness is the first step to actively working on shifting your mindset and redefining culture in order to focus on being a more culturally responsive educator. Mindset, Comfort Zone and Uniqueness Once we have engaged in introspection and itemized the beliefs and assumptions that are blocking us from believing that all students are unique and capable of achieving at high levels despite their cultural backgrounds and connections, we then have to actively act on our new beliefs in order to materialize and adopt our new mindset. Shifting mindset is not a one-time realization and action. Instead, it is an ongoing process that requires us to get out of our comfort zone and continuously implement our new beliefs in order for these to become our new culture. However, if we continuously make excuses and defend our old ways, then we are not working towards being culturally responsive educators. Allow yourself to feel uncomfortable as you learn and incorporate new ways to truly value each student’s uniqueness. Ensure that uniqueness is not viewed as part of a particular race, gender, class, ethnic group etc., but as an individual’s potentials and capabilities that are far greater than we can conceptualize. Once we can view each child as a unique being that brings unique experiences, energy, learning styles, beliefs, habits, knowledge, needs, interests, creativity and talents that we have the power to tap into and unleash, then we have started our mindset shift to culturally responsive teaching. Remember that reflection and self-checks are ongoing processes that we need to engage in to continue to be culturally responsive educators. Some questions to guide your journey are: "Am I reverting to how I was socialized? Am I reverting to my old way of thinking and teaching?" "Am I reverting to the mindsets that surround me? Do I still believe that each student has a uniqueness that is waiting to be unleashed?" "Do I still believe that all students are gifted and talented?" "Do I believe that students are way past just skills in math and other subjects and can engage in projects, real-world connections, research, creations, synthesis, word problems, presentations and more?" Designing Culturally Responsive Teaching Tasks Culturally responsive teaching focuses on the design of in-depth and rigorous tasks for ALL. Tasks should not be created for an ethnic, ability or social group, instead it should be focused on profound knowledge attainment and creativity for all. Culturally responsive task design takes multiple components into consideration such as cross curricular content, student engagement, equitable discussions, real-world and global connections, learning styles, experiences, interests, culture, and more. Some examples are linear functions and currency exchange, recipes and fractions, food and equations, linear functions and cost of renting a boat or attending a cultural event. One of the best ways I have found to design and incorporate culturally responsive tasks is to start off with a teacher input example about your own experiences and then give students choice in creating their own problem and tasks. In addition, and very importantly, as we design tasks, we have to plan with the end in mind to ensure that ALL students are given the opportunity to creatively represent knowledge gained based on their learning styles and uniqueness. Time MUST be carved out to allow students to research, create, represent, and present. Choice boards are great ways to have students choose based on interests, learning styles and cultural experiences. Implementation and Communication Designing exceptional culturally responsive lessons and tasks alone does not make us master culturally responsive educators if we fail to efficiently communicate and implement our designs. Before we communicate and implement, ask yourself the following questions. Is my implementation and communication about me and the ways I have been accustomed to doing things? If your answer to this question is yes, then everything you acted upon in the previous sections is lost. If your answer is no, but your implementation and communication expectations are not allowing all students to reach their fullest potential and creatively represent their learning based on their interest, background and experiences, then the creation of the tasks is contradictory. We must feel, exude and materialize the belief that each student has the ability to excel at very high levels and continuously communicate this belief to our students. Giving students time to independently engage in the rigorous tasks and creatively represent their knowledge in unique ways is one of the most important parts of implementation. We also have to ensure that implementation includes differentiating learning in order to meet the uniqueness of all students and it is not a one size-fit-all learning environment. Remember to give students time to share their creations with classmates, schoolmates, and other educators. To continue to be culturally responsive educators, we have to continually believe and adopt a mindset that all students have an undefined potential far greater that we can fathom, despite their race, ethnicity, class, color, accent, country of origin, age, gender and more, and change or redefine our cultural belief in order to allow them to unleash that potential through design, communication and implementation. References Banks, J. A. (2019, February 3). Multiculturalism’s Five Dimensions [Speech transcript]. https://www.learner.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/3.Multiculturalism.pdf Hidalgo, N. M. (1993). Multicultural Teacher Introspection. http://sidorkin.com/408/Hidalgo.PDF Educators at Understood. (2020, May). What is Culturally Responsive Teaching? https://www.understood.org/articles/en/what-is-culturally-responsive-teaching? Gorski, P. C. (1995-2020). Understanding the Depth and Breadth of “Multicultural”. http://www.edchange.org/multicultural/activities/multicultural.html Burnham, K.(2020,July31). 5 Culturally Responsive Teaching Strategies. https://www.northeastern.edu/graduate/blog/culturally-responsive-teaching-strategies Comments are closed.
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Cherry-Anne GildharryOn this page, you will find blogs on educational connections and my life's experiences. Ideas, thoughts and views are my own and are not representative of my employers. References/sources used are public articles found on the internet to support my blogs. Archives
April 2024
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