This week’s article summary is Inviting All Students to Learn from Educational Leadership (no link available). Its focus is how teachers can be more culturally competent.
As we have discussed in the past, one of our most critical responsibilities in teaching is honoring and celebrating our student' unique identities and what shapes and influences those identities.
Some of the more eccentric yet prideful aspects of my identity are being left-handed (only about 10% of us are lefties!), being a native New Yorker who at 25 packed up his car and moved to Oklahoma (took a lot of heat from fellow New Yorkers—even my parents--when I did this: “Is that even a part of the United States!"), being first born (I like rules and I like living within rules!).
Although Trinity School students are fairly homogenous socioeconomically, religiously, racially, etc.—we as teachers need to be vigilant not to assume all our students fall within those majorities. I have spoken about the difference between intent and impact: sometimes we can inadvertently marginalize kids (or colleagues or parents) by assuming they all see things the same way and have had the same experiences. When I was a kid, I definitely felt “left”-out being a lefty in school (no modeling in how to hold my pencil, no lefty desks, total frustration trying to use scissors) and in PE class (I had learn how to bat and golf right handed and there were never any lefty baseball gloves in the PE equipment—and forget about finding a left-handed catcher’s mitt).
The suggestions below are not earth shattering—more common sense about getting to know your students as individuals and encouraging, supporting, empowering them to share and be proud of who they are and what they believe
All people are shaped by the culture in which they live. The shaping process is both subtle and pervasive, and it can be difficult for all of us to grasp that people shaped by other cultures will see and respond to the world differently than we do.
As a result, it’s easy for teachers to interpret unfamiliar
student behaviors as expressions of disinterest, deficiency, disrespect, or defiance.
Below are four ways to become better attuned to differences so all
students flourish:
Recognize and appreciate cultural variance. Good teachers have always been ‘students of their students’. Now
it’s important to be students of their cultures, attuned to their languages,
appreciating their experiences and histories, and valuing their lenses on the
world.
Tune in to culturally influenced learning patterns. Some students’ backgrounds are collectivist while others are more
individualistic. Some will have learned to revere their teachers from a
distance, others to negotiate with their teachers as they would with a peer,
and still others that they owe their teachers no respect until it’s earned. Each
new layer of understanding provides a platform for creating a classroom in
which all comers can feel at home. Here are a few other cultural continuums on
which individual students are arrayed:
- Needs to observe <--->
Needs to test ideas
- Needs external structures <--->
Creates own structures
- Competitive <---> Collaborative
- Conforming <---> Creative
- Reserved <---> Expressive
- Fixed sense of time <--->
Flexible sense of time
- Information-driven <--->
Feeling-driven
A teacher noticed that several students were uncomfortable
responding to quick-response questions and on-the-spot writing prompts. Advised
by a colleague that these students had been taught to value reflection over
speed, and to listen and reflect before speaking, the teacher made two
adjustments: first, she gave advance warning of an upcoming question by saying,
“I want to hear from a couple of additional students on this topic. Then I’m
going to ask for your thinking.” Second, early in a lesson she said, “As we
conclude our lesson today, I’m going to ask you to summarize your understandings
in writing.” These minor tweaks made a noticeable difference to the comfort and
performance of formerly reticent students – and not just those the teacher
originally had in mind.
Look beyond cultural patterns to see individuals. Although there are learning-style patterns within cultures, there
are plenty of individual differences. Students who appear to be part of a
homogenous group can vary tremendously because of differences in gender, school
experience, parental support, time in the U.S., and personal temperament. True
cultural sensitivity requires person sensitivity as well.
Plan inviting curriculum and instruction. This means teaching history, literature, music, language, and
contemporary issues in ways that make as many connections as possible to
students’ varied cultures and experiences. In other words, the curriculum leads
students to explore content through universal lenses rather than only parochial
ones. A teacher who looks at students as individuals – no matter what their
cultural experiences are – will attend to their varied points of readiness,
their interests, their exceptionalities, their status among peers, and so on
when planning curriculum and instruction. And from a pedagogical perspective,
it’s wise to try to hit as many points on the continuums listed above as
possible, either in unit and lesson plans or the choices students are able to
make. For example, in preparing students for a challenging assessment, a
teacher might give two options: a quiz bowl, in which students compete in teams
to answer sets of questions, or a tag team, in which students collaborate in
groups to propose answers to the same questions, explain their thinking, and
ask one another for elaborations to clarify their thinking.
The characteristics of classrooms that invite students to learn
are as follows:
- Respect – Every student is valuable,
able, and responsible
- Trust – Each student contributes
to the learning process
- Optimism – Each student has
the potential to be successful
- Intentionality – Every step
of a lesson invites each student to learn.
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