Today鈥檚 post continues a yearlong series on how to avoid common mistakes made in the name of culturally responsive teaching.
Don鈥檛 Make Assumptions
Laleh Ghotbi is a 4th grade teacher at Riley Elementary School and lives in Salt Lake City. She is also a member of the Hope Street Group:
While many 糖心动漫vlog endorse the principles of culturally responsive teaching and make an effort to take into account students鈥� cultural backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives, certain misconceptions and areas could be improved.
Oversimplification, stereotyping, and generalization:
Often, 糖心动漫vlog make assumptions that all students from a particular cultural background share the same characteristics or learning interests. As a result, they neglect the individuality of students leading to inaccurate expectations and teaching approaches. Besides, when 糖心动漫vlog rely on stereotypes, they may unintentionally reinforce harmful biases.
This reminds me of a passage from The Black Friend, a great book I started reading recently. In the passage, the author recounts a distressing incident from his school years. A substitute teacher unfairly suspected the author and another student of color of cheating, perpetuating a harmful stereotype that undermined their academic achievements by suggesting that individuals like them couldn鈥檛 attain high scores. The author and his friend deliberately performed poorly on the tests to avoid a confrontation with the substitute teacher.
Forgetting about the most invaluable sources of information: families and communities:
Engaging families and communities helps 糖心动漫vlog gain a deeper understanding of the cultural backgrounds, traditions, and values of their students. Additionally, involving families and communities in students鈥� education helps create a more inclusive learning environment. When students see their cultural backgrounds acknowledged and respected, they feel a sense of belonging, which positively impacts their learning experiences.
During my daughter鈥檚 time in elementary school, her kindergarten teacher, Ms. Copson, went beyond traditional teaching. She actively engaged families of diverse backgrounds, inviting them to share their cultural values and educate the children. Ms. Copson made a lasting impact, becoming one of my daughter鈥檚 most beloved teachers. My daughter kept Ms. Copson鈥檚 picture on her bedroom wall for years as a cherished reminder of the positive influence she had on her education and appreciation for diversity.
Short-term activities versus consistent integration of cultural elements in the curriculum:
When 糖心动漫vlog choose brief activities, students lose the opportunity to truly grasp diverse cultures on a deeper level. It also limits their ability to establish genuine connections between different cultures and communities that represent cultural diversities.
By focusing on cultural values and students鈥� experiences for a short period, important issues such as inequity and oppression that contribute to cultural disparities in education are brushed aside. This also denies students the chance to engage with broader systemic issues and real-world concerns in a more continuous and meaningful way.
In conclusion, it is important for 糖心动漫vlog to approach culturally responsive teaching with a commitment to ongoing learning, building relationships with families and community members, and a genuine understanding of the diverse needs of their students.
鈥楾eachers, Do Your Homework鈥�
., is a veteran anti-racist educator with over 27 years of experience in the field and a Public Voice Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin with The OpEd Project. Follow her @2WardEquity on Instagram, Threads & Twitter (X):
1) Listening to rhetoric about culturally responsive teaching instead of reading the work of Geneva Gay (2000, 2018)
Teachers, do your homework. It is disingenuous to assume you can read one article and understand culturally responsive teaching. In your teacher-preparation programs, the model provided should be that of engaging with multiple perspectives about a concept or piece of research. Engaging with the perspectives of multiple scholars teaches us that from one concept or idea can spring many. Further, reading the works of actual teachers from marginalized groups can inform you about culturally responsive teaching in action.
Academic Geneva Gay (2000) says, 鈥淭eaching is a contextual and situational process. As such, it is most effective when ecological factors, such as prior experiences, community settings, cultural backgrounds, and ethnic identities of teachers and students, are included in its implementation.鈥� (p. 21)
Culturally responsive teaching exists within the context of your classroom, school, community, city, region, state, and country. It is not a set of strategies or skills tied to a test or rubric to rate teachers on how responsive their classroom is.
2) Assuming that no controversy will unfold in a culturally responsive classroom
Zaretta Hammond, one of my favorite culturally responsive 糖心动漫vlog, asked a question that has always stuck with me. Our classrooms are culturally responsive, but to whom?
To that I answer, you! Your classroom naturally responds to your culture. Your culture is the culture that all your decisions are based on. You are your pedagogy, and your curricular decisions are made based on your specific set of values and beliefs about teaching and educating students in your content area(s).
3) Assuming the word 鈥渃ulture鈥� refers to nonwhite people only
The assumption still exists today that white people have no culture, and, therefore, white students do not need to be taught in a culturally responsive manner.
Teaching in a culturally responsive manner is choosing books with characters that mirror the student鈥檚 culture. It also means choosing books that expand students鈥� view of who shares the world with them. Understanding the world outside the classroom is a skill all students need to navigate the complexities of living among other humans.
Culturally responsive pedagogy invites dialogue about topics within and outside the curriculum. Culturally responsive pedagogy also requires the teacher to think beyond the curriculum and consider how the content of their assigned curriculum can enrich the learning and growth of their students.
It鈥檚 Not Just 鈥楧ifferentiation鈥�
Dwayne Chism is the founder of Shifting Perspectives Inc., an organization geared toward creating equitable educational outcomes for students. His latest book is Leading Your School Toward Equity:
One common misconception about culturally responsive teaching is the belief that traditional approaches to differentiation are sufficient for achieving cultural responsiveness in instruction.
Ironically, although teachers are taught to treat differentiated instruction to meet individual student needs, what is often overlooked in differentiated approaches is the critical role of culture and its impact on learning. Yes, it is beneficial for teachers to adjust the content taught, the process of teaching, the tasks students engage in, and the learning environment in effort to meet individual students鈥� needs, but culture intersects with all these aspects and must be considered as an essential part of the equation.
Within all differentiated-instruction approaches, there should be a deliberate consideration of a student鈥檚 identity and how it can be affirmed to further support student agency and resilience.
Culturally responsive teaching requires connecting all experiences and conditions that impact students to the intended learning outcomes. When culturally responsive differentiated strategies are authentically employed, it allows not only for increased access but creates a deeper sense of belonging within students.
Another misguided approach to culturally responsive teaching is when teachers focus solely on strategies such as ready-made activities or celebrating cultural festivities to appropriately react to students鈥� culture, while overlooking the importance of examining how students respond to the use of such strategies. This can result in missing the deeper connections and adjustments needed to truly support or meaningfully engage students in the process of learning.
Incorporating aspects of students鈥� culture is important, but this alone does not equate to an adequate instructional response to culture. It鈥檚 essential to also consider the results of such actions. How are students responding? Who is benefiting or gaining deeper access? Along with student responses, teachers must also engage in deeply examining their relationships and interactions to determine whether their strategies are truly culturally responsive.
Translating Isn鈥檛 Enough
Shannon Smith is a multilingual-learner coach at and provides professional development and technical assistance to leaders and teachers of multilingual learners in a variety of school districts:
Through my work with districts and schools around research-based, culturally responsive teaching practices for multilingual learner (ML) instruction, I often find that teachers equate honoring students鈥� cultural and linguistic backgrounds to translating and interpreting all content into their primary language. However, translating and interpreting all content does not necessarily honor multilingual learners鈥� rich linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Here鈥檚 why:
- Multilingual Learners may have varying levels of proficiency in their primary language. They may have developed their social language but were still developing their academic language before arriving in our classrooms. Also, MLs may not be literate or have fully developed their literacy skills in their primary language.
- Language is a part of our culture, but is not the only aspect. Culture also includes how we interact with others and work toward goals. For example, MLs may prefer to orally discuss content tasks before they put their thoughts on paper. They may also want to make sure everyone will be successful in completing the assignment, not just themselves. Therefore, they may prefer to discuss content with peers, so everyone clearly understands before tackling independent tasks.
So, the big question teachers ask is, what should I do if I am not supposed to translate or interpret my class content for multilingual learners? I want my MLs to be successful. How can they do that if content isn鈥檛 shared with them in a language they understand? Let鈥檚 look at three strategies that honor students鈥� cultural and linguistic backgrounds without translating and interpreting everything.
- Purposeful use of translation and interpretation: First, make sure you get to know your students to understand their proficiency in their primary language, including their literacy skills, so you can purposefully integrate primary-language scaffolds that will be effective for your MLs. For example, a quick translation or interpretation may sometimes be necessary, such as clarifying directions. Also, you can create engineered texts that amplify a course text by embedding linguistic clues to help them with comprehension, such as embedded definitions or words or brief phrases in a student鈥檚 primary language. You can design assignments that could be completed bilingually, such as interviewing a family member or community member for a class project or utilizing a bilingual glossary to write a story or text in both English and their primary language.
Peer learning opportunities that leverage translanguaging: helps multilingual learners develop oral language, academic language, literacy, and content skills. Translanguaging is when individuals use more than one language to communicate. For example, in a group discussion, students may use a mix of Portuguese and English and gestures to talk about an image of a desert ecosystem to help explain their ideas and reach a common understanding. Intentionally grouping MLs with other students who speak their primary language during partner and group work can support translanguaging.
Sometimes, teachers are uncomfortable allowing students to use their primary language because they may not speak it and are afraid that students may be off task or have misconceptions. It鈥檚 OK if you don鈥檛 speak the language. You can set up concrete tasks for the group, so you will be able to identify whether or not students are engaged in the activity and understand the content.
Activating and building background knowledge by connecting to prior experiences: Multilingual learners bring valuable assets, unique perspectives, and background knowledge to enrich discussions and engagement with the content. Activating and developing background knowledge can help them make meaning out of the words and phrases they read and hear during instruction. One strategy to activate and assess background knowledge is to use categorized sticky notes, where the teacher poses a question related to the topic of the upcoming text. Students respond to the prompt on a sticky note and post it on the board or chart paper to sort into categories.
An image discussion is an activity that activates and teaches background knowledge. The teacher directly teaches an essential vocabulary term to MLs by discussing images related to the term and the content.
So, next time you or a colleague are tempted to translate an entire text or activity, try one of these strategies to honor multilingual learners鈥� linguistic and cultural backgrounds instead.
Thanks to Laleh, Angela, Dwayne, and Shannon for contributing their thoughts!
Today鈥檚 post answered this question:
What do you think are the most common things teachers get wrong about culturally responsive teaching?
Part One in this series featured Zaretta Hammond.
In Part Two, Fran莽oise Thenoux, Jehan Hakim, and Courtney Rose contributed their responses.
In Part Three, Crystal M. Watson, Tiffani Maher, Kristi Mirich-Glenwright, and Keisha Rembert shared their comments.
In Part Four, Gholdy Muhammad, Shondel Nero, and Denita Harris provided their commentaries.
Part Five featured responses from Andrea Castellano and Erica Buchanan-Rivera.
Melanie Battles, Mary Rice-Boothe, and Vera Naputi shared their answers in Part Six.
Part Seven highlighted contributions from Laura Franco-Flores , Esmeralda Cartagena Collazo , and Alexandra Gorodiski.
Consider contributing a question to be answered in a future post. You can send one to me at lferlazzo@epe.org. When you send it in, let me know if I can use your real name if it鈥檚 selected or if you鈥檇 prefer remaining anonymous and have a pseudonym in mind.
You can also contact me on Twitter at .
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