The United States is a very diverse country, made up of people from all over the world, with different cultures, religions, economic status, sexual orientation and ability or disability represented in society. As teachers, it is our duty to understand each of our students’ needs regardless of their socioeconomic background and provide them with the help necessary so that they could succeed in school and life. Being a teacher requires commitment and acceptance; that is why teachers have to understand their students’ culture and background to be able to identify certain behaviors in their classrooms. A culturally responsive teacher is a teacher who understands that the cultural and social backgrounds of students play a major role in the learning process. An Ideal culturally responsive teacher is someone who is willing to adjust their lesson plans to use different teaching approaches to meet every students’ needs. Some of the students’ behaviors teachers must accept because they are acceptable in the students’ cultures are based on religious beliefs, values and traditions. In the book Teaching in America it talks about Muslim students being able to miss class for their Friday prayers. “At Garfield High School, an empty classroom is provided for Muslims to pray during lunch periods, …show more content…
Culturally responsive teachers take the time to respect and accommodate students’ learning styles by integrating multicultural perspectives throughout the curriculum. This is important because they might have students with special needs that require more time or a different teaching approach than the rest of the class. When a teacher takes the time to learn about their student’s backgrounds and the cultural characteristics of their families and communities they are able to see things through their students’
To be brief, culturally relevant teaching "is a pedagogy that empowers students intellectually, socially, emotionally, and politically by using cultural referents to impart knowledge, skills, and attitudes (Ladson-Billings, 2009, pp. 20)." The emphasis of culturally relevant teaching is to understand that children have different needs and in order to deal with them in the best way possible is equitably. The inability to recognize these differences causes teachers to limit their ability to meet the student's educational needs and prevents them from being culturally relevant (Ladson-Billings, 2009, pp.37). Contrary to culturally relevant teaching, assimilationist teaching is a style that disregards a student's particular cultural characteristics. This teaching method follows a hierarchical model. According to the assimilationist perspective, the teacher's role is to ensure that students fit into society (Ladson-Billings, 2009, pp. 24). The book is full of amazing teaching strategies, teaching styles, and methods that would help benefit educators working with children of any grade
Culturally relevant pedagogy utilizes students' culture as a vehicle for learning. Therefore, “good teaching” is based on the teachers’ ability to integrate a student’s background knowledge and prior home and community experiences into the curriculum and to the teaching and learning experiences that take place in the classroom. Burning Questions: Although Landson-Billings wrote this article in 1995, much of her arguments are still relevant in our classrooms
There are three main criteria in Culturally relevant pedagogy. First, students must experience academic success. Second, they must develop or maintain their cultural competence. Third, students must develop a critical consciousness in which they challenge the status quo. Ladson-Billings put this pedagogy in action by doing a 3-year study of successful teachers of African American students.
(http://www.tolerance.org/supplement/culture-classroom) New York University Steinhardt School. (2008). Culturally responsive classroom strategies (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.. Retrieved from http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/scmsAdmin/uploads/005/121/Culturally%20Responsive%20Classroom%20Mgmt%20Strat2.pdf Chen, D. W., Nimmo, J., & Fraser, H. (2009). Becoming a culturally responsive early childhood educator: A tool to support reflection by teachers embarking on the anti-bias journey.
The article “But that’s just good teaching! The case for culturally relevant Pedagogy” expressed how it is important to focus on academic success, however the teacher and school district still needs to be culturally competent toward African American students. If a teacher cannot reach all of their students regardless of ethnicity or culture then they are not teaching to the best of their abilities. The issue of how African Americans students are being taught and treated in the classroom is a concern that many people do not realize is a current problem. The author argued that, “During the 1960s when African Americans were fighting for civil rights, one of the primary battlefronts was the classroom.”
To start with, culturally responsive teaching practices recognize the validity of the cultural custom contained by several ethnic groups. In other words, it considers whether different approaches of learning are necessary and worthy in the formal learning. Furthermore, culturally responsive teaching practices are fundamental because they create links between school experience and home and between lived social cultural realities and academic abstraction (Gay, 2000).
Professional Development for responsive cultural teachers aims to prepare teachers to support students from various backgrounds to succeed in literacy achievement. Many teachers are not satisfied with the Professional Development programs they attended; many found that the programs open their cultural awareness but were unsuccessful educating them how to implement cultural strategies in their classroom (Lew &Nelson, 2016; Turner, 2007). The construction of the classroom into a learning environment for students from the different family backgrounds, practices cultures, and customs. In developing a diverse learning environment, the teacher can create cultural tailored and deferential instructions, which consist of philosophies and tactics to establish a community of learners who fundamentally respect each other and their cultural environment. Develop codes for tasks, activities, and routine during circle time.
First, the socio-cultural consciousness involves the understanding that social class, language, and race influence a person’s way of thinking, behavior and being. Another characteristic is an encouraging attitude and respect towards students of culturally diverse backgrounds. Culturally responsive teachers are also skillful and committed to acting as agents of change. They hold constructivist views of education, upholding that all students have the capability of learning. They learn about their students’ culture, home, and past experiences helping them to use culturally responsive strategies in teaching (Kea, Campbell-Whatley and Richards
Being a culturally responsive teacher includes learning more about the students, becoming a constant learner, and implementing various cultures into the curriculum. I will learn more about the background of my students in my classroom by engaging in meaningful conversation with parents and families. Parents are the child’s first teacher and they want to be respected as an equal when interacting with educators. They are an essential part of the student’s overall success. I will investigate to learn what the parents’ concerns, hopes, and suggestions concerning their child are.
Thus, throughout the proposal, I will problem-pose concerning culturally responsive teaching and the disadvantages of excluding culture in a learning environment. My guiding question is, “What role does culture play in teaching
It is an observable fact that students are from diverse backgrounds, which in classroom instruction, there is a need to identify effective methods for their learning or the need for pedagogical approaches that are individually and culturally responsive. Today's classrooms need teachers to educate students with different culture, language, abilities, and many other characteristics. To face this challenge, teachers must adapt not only theoretically sound but also culturally responsive pedagogy. (Gollnick & Chinn, 2012).
Much like multicultural education, it acknowledges the legitimacy of the cultural heritages of different ethnic group and incorporates multicultural information in all the subjects and skills routinely taught in schools. Together they build bridges of meaningfulness between home and school experiences as well as between academic abstractions and lived sociocultural realities. Using multicultural education and culturally responsive teaching should involve considerations to the classroom environment. For example, literature in the classroom would reflect multiple ethnic perspectives and literary genres. Math instruction would incorporate everyday-life concepts, such as economics, employment, consumer habits, of various ethnic groups.
As an administrator, my supervisory approach will address cultural diversity, including ethnicity, socioeconomic status, gender, sexual orientation etc. within the curriculum. More than just a guide for the classroom; curriculum is a written plan of action that assists students and staff in achieving their academic and developmental goals. Successful leaders should have a thorough understanding of all aspects related to curriculum and possess knowledge of best instructional and school practices. According to Ralph Tyler (1957), the term curriculum is “all the learning experiences planned and directed by the school to attain its educational goals.”
No student is exactly like another student, every child learns, thinks, and behaves differently, so it would be ignorant to think that one way of teaching is effective for all students. All students come from a diverse background and have different lives outside of schools, so one set curriculum is not going to effectively reach all students and instead will leave many students not learning what they need and struggling to get through their education. Cultural responsiveness is important to ensure that all of our students are learning what they need to and are not being left behind because they learn differently than their peers. Teachers should be willing to alter their lesson plans and ways of teaching so they can help all of their students be successful in learning and helping them to participate in activities presented to the class. Especially for students with exceptionalities, cultural responsiveness is very important.
There are many factors that play a role in the learning process for every human being. Race, religion, language, socioeconomics, gender, family structure, and disabilities can all affect the ways in which we learn. Educators must take special measures in the delivery of classroom instruction to celebrate the learning and cultural differences of each of their students. As communities and schools continue to grow in diversity, teachers are searching for effective educational programs to accommodate the various learning styles of each student while promoting acceptance of cultural differences throughout the classroom. It no longer suffices to plan educational experiences only for middle-or upper class white learners and then expect students of other social classes and cultures to change perspectives on motivation and competition, learning styles, and attitudes and values that their homes and families have instilled in them (Manning & Baruth, 2009).