Culturally Responsive Pedagogy

A culturally responsive teacher should have learning styles that integrate the cultural context of teaching and learning into the curriculum by using the prior learning of students and including students’ own personal cultural perceptions.  The teacher should also utilize the affect in building interpersonal relationships with their students and fine-tune teaching methods that conflict with the student learning styles.

Most teacher should have field experience working with culturally diverse populations in communities with K-12 schools.  Unfortunately, I did not have that opportunity here in rural Kansas.  To be a culturally responsive teacher you are up-to-date about your subject matter and will regularly discovery information that can increase the multicultural perspective of your teaching discipline.  Students are also a great source of information during your daily instruction. 

It is important for teachers to know how to generate assignments that permit small groups of students to collaborate on academic projects founded on problem-solving skills; that in the end give students their voice in an engaged classroom.

Culturally responsive teachers embrace diversity as a value to the school and encourage the cultural backgrounds of students, and have faith in the high achievement goals for all students regardless of their race, ethnicity, or class.  

By being a cultural responsive teacher, it helps to bridge the different ways of knowledge and will engage the student from a non-dominate culture by indicating if they are capable of language usage, grammar or math knowledge and any tools they might use to circumnavigate their everyday lives.   

Culturally responsive teachers need to use intrinsic motivation.  This will help to be respectful of different cultures in your classroom.  When a teacher is in harmony with her students, the more likely he / she is to evoke, encourage and sustain intrinsic motivation.  Teachers can do this by making sure all students are included; the classroom is an inviting atmosphere where both the students and the teacher respect one another.  Attitude is important.  From the first day of class there needs to be a favorable outlook toward learning through personal significance and choice.  You, as a teacher need to create challenging and thoughtful experiences that make the students think, and encourage discussion.  And lastly, students in your classroom need to feel they are learning something of value.  Remember, students are aware of their cultural differences, so make them feel welcome, and they will feel welcome.

Here is something to ponder. All teachers care for their students.  But there is caring about your student and caring for you student, and this is not just about feeling, but also about doing something about the feelings for helping someone.  I gave my entire class this year mittens and stocking caps, because I had them.  Another teacher in my school did the same thing.  Being considerate for students is a major element of culturally responsive pedagogy and results when teachers advocate for students.  We do this at our Title 1 school in rural Kansas because of our diversity of poor students, who cannot afford stocking caps or mittens on their own. 

How do you become a culturally responsive teacher?  As a teacher, you need to reflect on your actions and interactions with your students.  Keep a journal so you can look back and see what you might have done differently.  At parent / teacher conferences, get to know your students’ parents.  Find out about their beliefs, their experiences with the school or the community, so you teach their child better.  Become a member in various groups that may help you understand the community better.  You can also become a member to a teacher organization.  Study the history and experiences of the students in your room.  Have your students help with this.  If it helps, ask your students if you can visit their home and learn more about their lifestyle.  Research other teachers who were successful teaching in diverse settings.  Take a day off school and go visit a larger school that has a diverse classroom. 

When you have a student in your classroom from a different culture, it is important to acknowledge it.  Have a ‘share day’ where they invite their family and show off their traditions. Maybe bring in special food, pictures, and what not.  Make a big deal out of it.  Have the students work together to make a bulletin board over the students’ culture.  That way all the students are researching where the student is from.  Do a report on “diversity around the world” and see how the students feel about the word, then have a learning day over diversity.  More than anything, it is imperative that all your students feel they are treated fairly and with respect, no matter where they are from. 

All students have the same opportunities to achieve to the best of their ability.  This is the teacher’s responsibility to every one of her students.  A teacher cannot teach to just one group, or the rest of the students are being unfairly taught. 

“Diversity is not a characteristic of life; it is a condition necessary for life…like air and water.”

                                                                                                                                    Barry Lopez

Social Relations and Behavior

Stereotyping at schools has become big issue.  I am not sure if you can ever fully eliminate it in a school setting.  I have seen it be so bad that a student moved to another school.  I have had personal experience with bullying. 

My discrimination began when my daughter began high school.  She is very athletic and proved herself on the basketball team.  The volleyball team was something else, though, as the coach did not like the fact that Jacy was better than her daughters, and made sure that Jacy did not play her freshman year, and her sophomore year was mad that she did not play better.  Her junior year was better, as she played on varsity, but by this time, many girls quit going out for volleyball due to this coach.  This was also the last year her daughter played too.  Every year this coach’s girls played they were captains when they were seniors.  Guess what happened when my daughter became a senior?  They voted, and decided on other people for captain, and Jacy was not a captain her senior year.  Hence, the bullying began between this coach and myself.

Backing up a step, during my daughter’s junior year, the volleyball coach’s daughter was a senior.  They played basketball together.  Jacy was scoring about 25-35 points a game.  During a game before Christmas, she got hurt and had a terrible sprained ankle.  The blatant comments from the volleyball coach toward my daughter regarding how she should still be playing was ridiculous.  The team lost many games during this time.  The coach also was making comments on social media about me being a “helicopter parent”, a “poor parent”, and would just post very negative things without putting my name on it.  It was so horrible.  Plus, at school, she would get the other teachers together in the hall and talk, and quit talking as soon as I would walk by. 

The teachers in the school would get together and go out to eat, went to a painting party, and went to one others houses.  There was a blatant exclusion going on towards me; and it got worse.  When I would walk into the lunch room, they began ignoring me, along with the failure to include me on outings.  When I walked down the hall, none of the other teachers would give me the time of day due to this volleyball coach.  She had talked so poorly about me to them, that they were afraid to cross her and talk to me.  Out of all the teachers in the grade school, the kindergarten teacher talked to me because she was new and would let what the volleyball coach said go in one ear and out the other.  She really kept me sane during the past two years.

I finally blocked this teacher on Facebook and Pinterest, because I just didn’t need the negativity in my life.  I got to where I stayed in my classroom except to go to the break room to get copies.  I brought coffee in a carafe, had a bathroom in my room, and brought my own lunch.  I prayed that I didn’t have to run into her at all. 

The discrimination went farther than I thought.  When I tried to talk to my principal about all of this, she turned it around and blamed me.  She and the volleyball coach had been friends for over ten years since their girls had played softball together.  So, trying to get help went nowhere.  I was told to stay away from her!  How do you do that when you work in the same building, and your job requires you to talk to her?  You use e-mail!

At the end of last year, the principal came up to me (teaching Title 1 / At Risk) and the 6^th grade teacher and told us that the only position that would be open at our school would be mine as they were combining 5^th and 6^th grade.  The other position that would be open would be the 5^th and 6^th grade combined class across the district.  Now both of us live in town, and I’ve been here for going on twenty-two years, whereas the other teacher (friends with the coach) has been here for four.  She cried and cried about how she lives across the street and doesn’t want to have to drive to the other school to work.  I finally just told her I would take the position. 

The best part is I feel almost welcome in my new school.  The teachers over at my new school exclude me, but I think it is because I am new, and my classroom is at the opposite end of the building than theirs.  Kindergarten through fourth is at one of the building, and my classroom, the art room and the resource room is at the other end.  Before school, during school, after school, and constantly in between, you can catch those teachers gathered in the hall “talking”.  I am probably still sensitive from my two years at the ‘other’ school, but I feel like when I head down to their end, they welcome me, but the feel in the air changes.  Maybe next year when I’m not a new teacher anymore I will feel differently.  I sure hope so. 

The good news is that now that I am no longer in the school setting where the volleyball coach turned all the other teachers against me, these same teachers look at me differently now that they are not hearing negative things about me all the time.  They talk to me when I see them and we carry on conversations.  It is now, how it should have been all along.  Maybe this will open their eyes to how it was when I was there.  I can hope, anyway.

To sum up countering discrimination in an educational setting, block these negative people on social media, (i.e. Facebook, Pinterest, etc.) go to a supervisor or teacher, try to move to a different location, and talk to a friend! They will keep you centered and sane!  I do not know how I would have gotten through two years of crap without having ONE good friend in a mess of back-stabbers!

     

     While watching the documentary on Ellis Island, I couldn't help but feel sorry for all of the immigrants coming into America.  Considering most didn't speak or read English, they were shuffled through like cattle going through a chute. These people were checked for lice and other health problems, were given a number before boarding a ship, forced to pay 5 pounds per person, had to endure a grueling sea voyage, and then had to have their name changed when they arrived because neither they nor the processors could pronounce it to spell it.

     I do not understand why New York made the change their names so drastically.  Why couldn't the people working there work harder to spell out their names?  Also, why didn't the government work to help the incoming immigrants?  They needed help to start, and were just left to fend for themselves when they arrived. I also do not understand why the immigrants had to pay to come here.  If they had to pay back in the 1890's, why don't we make the immigrants pay today?  

     These immigrants faced many challenges.  One challenge was the voyage to America.  They were only fed one time a day and then they only received soup and a half a slice of bread.  Many were sea-sick, and didn't know where the toilets were. Their beds were crowded together in the bottom of the boat and it smelled of rotten food and puke; so those who had blankets stayed on the top.   Another challenge they faced was after they landed and walked into Ellis Island, they had a chance of being separated from their families due to illness. America wanted healthy immigrants, not the burden of unhealthy immigrants. These immigrants were also sent home for the slightest sign of a mental illnesses.  The biggest challenge these immigrants faced was coming up with the 5 pounds per person for the voyage. It took some families two to three years to save enough money to make the voyage to America.  After they paid, they were told where to go, but now these immigrants had to find money for the passage to their new land, plus food to get there.   

     I have a problem with migration right now.  I guess I feel that if you want to come to America, then you need to learn to speak English, you need to become a citizen, and be willing to work.  I do not think it is right that people are coming into this country illegally, and getting a free education, free health care, free food and a free living allowance.  This may hurt some of your feelings and I am sorry, but at my age, I believe there are too many Americans who need jobs that are going to immigrants because they will work for less money.  

But, on the other hand, Americans won't do the job of some of the immigrants, so who are you supposed to hire?  How about hiring the 'legal' immigrants to work, and making the 'illegal' immigrants go home?