Culturally Responsive Teaching

This week’s article summary is Three Ways to Become a Culturally responsive Teacher. It’s a blog from a high school English teacher in a private-independent school near Philadelphia.

 I like the honesty of his blog. His recommendations (and the classroom experiences he shares) are simple yet provocative and illustrative of the ambiguity we teachers deal with in increasingly more diverse classrooms. I especially like how he embraces this ambiguity and encourages his students to share their thoughts, feelings, opinions within a safe and trusting classroom environment. 

As opposed to being ‘politically correct’, i.e., avoiding controversial issues, the teacher tries to help his students work through ideas they have that are most likely based on limited information, stereotypes, and/or personal perspectives.

While the author is a high school teacher, his ideas apply to elementary school children as well.

 Joe

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As teachers, we want our students to feel safe and empowered inside our classrooms. But most of us know kids in our schools who feel unsupported or invisible. This disparity is troubling, especially in light of the growing diversity at most independent schools. Compared to 20 or even 10 years ago, today our students occupy a range of racial and ethnic backgrounds, socioeconomic levels, sexual orientations, and religious affiliations.

We know that our schools need culturally responsive teachers, but how?

We might think of a culturally responsive teacher as one who understands and celebrates the differences between her students; one who makes every student feel welcome and valuable in class; and one who allows all students to share their experiences, perspectives, and opinions without fear.

What follows are some modest suggestions for ways to train our students and ourselves to become more culturally sensitive.

Seize moments of cultural awareness

Teachable moments related to cultural awareness frequently bubble up in our classrooms. I had one in my 11th grade English classroom at The Haverford School, where I have taught upper school English for four years. Haverford is a small (425 students), all-boys school located in suburban Philadelphia. Like many independent schools, Haverford enrolls many students from affluent families. We also have students from lower-income families. The income gap between our most and least wealthy families occasionally creates tension and anxiety for our kids. Lower-income students have written essays for me in which they describe feeling alienated from our prep school world.  

After reading Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography, America’s archetypal rags-to-riches story, I invited my 11th graders to think about socioeconomic mobility today. Perhaps not surprisingly, the room remained silent; one boy finally broke the silence. He insisted, with an unmistakable hint of condescension in his voice, that most poor people are lazy. Another student disagreed immediately. Suffice it to say that the tension in the room mounted as the other students looked first at the two speakers and then at me. I paused my lesson, inviting the group to think carefully about the views both boys expressed. “Can we point to empirical evidence,” I asked the group, “that confirms that people experiencing poverty are always lazy?” Silence ensued. Scanning the room, I sensed that kids were afraid to say the “wrong” thing. So I asked another question: “Why do some people make it in America while others don’t?” This time, several hands shot up in the air. The first person I called on was the boy who had accused poor people of being lazy. I invited him to speak again because I wanted to give him a chance to explain his thinking. Also, I wanted to remind everyone that we must grant others the right to their opinions, even when we vehemently disagree. 

He insisted that success boils down to hard work, citing his father and grandfather as examples of hard workers who built and maintained a lucrative company. The group was split roughly down the middle: Some students agreed with the notion that grit and hard work are all that’s needed to make it in America, while others cited examples from their personal lives and our literature to dispel that idea. These objectors noted that the American Dream is more myth than reality for the majority of middle- and lower-class people. 

When the class finally ended, I encouraged them to keep the debate alive outside of class. Frustrated by our lack of resolution, a few kids rolled their eyes. Looking back, what I recall about that discussion are the collective feelings of frustration and passion. Every boy held tightly to his ideas about social mobility; no one wanted to concede the other one’s point. Yet I consider that day a small victory. 

We take a small step toward becoming culturally responsive teachers when we confront rather than retreat from such situations. Taking direct action is not easy. Admittedly, my first impulse when I heard my student accuse poor people of being lazy was to ignore the storm and simply move ahead with my lesson plan. But by not responding, I would have sent a powerful message to my students about what I stand for as a teacher and a citizen. Also, had I remained silent, I would have missed a chance to raise my students’ (and my own) cultural awareness around an issue that affects all of us in independent schools. I encourage all of us to be mindful of these situations when they arise. 

If you feel unprepared to respond immediately, let your students know that you will not drop the issue and want to return to it later. I might have said, “You know, I’m glad you guys made your points. Let’s talk more about them tomorrow.” A decade of teaching has taught me that these moments can have a profound and lasting impact on students. As educators, we prepare our students when we place cultural awareness at the center of our courses, when we create a safe space for students to explore their ideas with respect to, say, race relations or social class or gender identity. When these thorny topics come up in my class, I remind my students that these subjects are what our course is really about.

Invite kids to share their stories

Students who appear culturally insensitive to us often lack exposure to different people. Some boys at my school rarely venture into the city of Philadelphia. Television, films, and sensational media reports inform their sense of who lives there and what those people’s lives are like. It’s easy for these students — and for young people in general — to assume that everyone’s experience mirrors their own. So I ask my students at the start of the school year to write personal narratives about what matters most to them. Their stories reveal aspects of their hometowns, families, friends, and hobbies. Then they share their stories in a series of in-class writing workshops. 

Our workshop reinforces the fact that their lives are at the heart of our course. It also gives them a glimpse into the experiences of their peers. They see where their lives intersect and diverge from one another. Culturally responsive teachers fill their classrooms with the rich experiences of students’ varied lives. As teachers, we can also share our own personal stories, which help us earn students’ trust and respect. The point is that sharing stories fosters a culture of empathy and respect inside our classrooms.

Recognize that resolution is not guaranteed

Like many teachers, I entered the profession with a desire to positively transform the lives of young people. While that desire hasn’t changed, what has changed is my understanding of the time it takes for our work to pay off. When I first walked into a classroom, I was naïve enough to think that I could change students’ hearts and minds in the span of a single class period, marking period, or even a whole school year. Now I see how woefully misguided I was. 

Culturally sensitive teachers ask their students to wrestle with intensely personal, highly complex issues like politics, identity, and moral values. Let’s not forget that these are topics with which many adults struggle. It should come as no surprise that our students often resist wading into such murky waters. But we should not abandon the work, nor should we expect to resolve our society’s most complex problems before lunch. A more realistic approach frames culturally responsive teaching as a “slow burn” process. We build our curriculum to ignite our students’ passions and sympathies. It may take years for the spark to catch fire. 

Teach long enough and you will be gratified by a student who writes a letter or stops by your classroom to tell you that a class discussion, or a time you lent him your ear, changed his life. When difficult moments like the one outlined above come up in my classroom, I reiterate to my students that there are no easy answers. Ultimately, I believe that introducing them to complex cultural problems is the best way I can help them learn.