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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. I will accomplish this by conducting home visits and establishing effective communication between school and home. I will grasp a better understanding about the child’s diverse culture and learn about the whole child. The building a personal understanding of a student’s culturally diverse family and parents …show more content…
Everyone in the classroom can benefit from the diverse culture views brought into the atmosphere of the school. When there is a lack of cultural understanding it can drastically impact the classroom in a negative manner. As a future teacher, I know it is crucial to take the effort to know the student personally because different cultures learn in various ways. I will immerse myself in the world of the student and upbringing. Furthermore, as a teacher I will be open to learning and investigating cultural views and diving into new beliefs. It is necessary for the teacher to be a constant learner and to realize that learning never stops. I will develop knowledge about various cultures and take the time to learn more from families and their values. I will dive into researching different cultural backgrounds and even touring the students’ neighborhoods. In addition, I will be able to approach a multitude of diverse students with acquired knowledge about
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
Gloria Ladson-Billings supports this idea in her essay titled “’Yes, But How Do We Do it?’ Practicing Culturally Relevant Pedagogy” and also expands upon its importance by adding the insight of how teachers think about the social contexts, the students, the curriculum, and about instruction, all impact the students because how teachers regards these contexts get woven into their pedagogy, which create the very classrooms for learning.
The article talks about how teachers need to have cultural compatibility. While it might be difficult for some teacher to grasp and understand the different cultures behaviors and beliefs. For those teacher that can are more likely to provide a learning environment that is enriching and responsive to the children’s different cultures. Teacher should have “meaningful interactions with members of other cultures and promote cultural disequilibrium (Colombo, 2005, p. 2).” Activities that have this are more likely to increase cultural competence.
We as educators must always act in the best interests of the children, while we seek to understand and embrace the different cultures by talking, listening and learning from the families and communities that surround us.
Furthermore, I feel that being a culturally responsive teacher is a great asset to students, because most of the time students build relationships and communication skills with teachers. The teachers feel they are culturally responsive to students. The culturally responsive teacher will help students gain these skills through the "banking" concept of education, in which, students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor.
When the majority of teachers in America are White, middle class women who only speak English in a country were students are starting to come from a multitude of backgrounds it is no wonder problems are arising. As more people from different cultures and religions immigrate to the United States the average classroom is losing the cultural uniformity it had in the past. Though the faces in classrooms are steadily changing many teachers have not been able to adjust as quickly to the ever growing diversity taking place. One would expect for teachers to still be able to teach students effectively whether they share a similar background or not, but in actuality cultural conflicts between teachers and students are only getting worse. Especially when
Culturally responsive teaching is defined by Gay (2002) as the use of cultural characteristics, experiences, and perspectives of ethnically diverse students as channels for teaching them more effectively. It is based on the assumption that by presenting academic content and skills to diverse students as something that they are likely to know or have experienced, the content will be more meaningful and easily retained. Likewise, culturally responsive teaching helps students to feel more welcome, and is effective not only for diverse students and ELLs, but also students that are a part of a low socioeconomic status (SES). According to Gay (2002), there are five components to developing successful culturally responsive teachers: developing a cultural diversity knowledge base, developing culturally relevant curricula, demonstrating cultural caring and building a learning community, exhibiting cross-cultural communications, and delivering cultural congruity in classroom instruction. Culturally responsive teaching denotes that teachers need not only to be adept with content knowledge and pedagogical skills, but with their student populations as well.
As an educator one must understand that the children you will be teaching will all come from different backgrounds, different ethnicities, different homes with different values. No one student will be the same, and no one student will learn the same. The role of a modern educator is to harness this idea of diversity and channel it into a positive learning atmosphere for children of all backgrounds. “I define culturally responsive teaching as using the cultural knowledge, prior experiences, frames of reference, and performance styles of ethnically diverse students to make learning encounters more relevant to and effective for them” (Gay, 2013, p.50.). The hope for all teachers is to capture the minds of their children, as educators we must learn how our students learn, adapt to their skill set and channel our curriculum to their strength.
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).
In order to do this we must recognize what being culturally proficient means and model that in all our interactions in our community. By addressing cultural needs and building on personal experiences, our staff and students will gain a greater appreciation for other cultures and be able to work and live in our global society. “We must first comprehend the fact that children-all children-come to school motivated to enlarge their culture. But we must start with their culture….” (Garcia, 1999 p.8 as cited in Lindsey et al, 2013) This statement is true for all students especially students with disabilities as educators build upon student strengths and personal experiences to make connections between school, home and community.
Culturally responsive teaching is very important in today’s day and age. Classrooms are filled with students from different backgrounds, races, and ethnicities. Teachers need to put into consideration those differences when building curriculum and creating a classroom atmosphere. Subcultures might also need to be considered when teaching, such as the culture of the disabled. The culture of students with disabilities is one that may appear within many classrooms due to the increase of students with disabilities. Teachers who are able to maintain a culturally responsive classroom and curriculum will provide ideal learning opportunities for all students and encourage them to succeed. (Darrow, 2013)
Becoming more perceptive and analytic observers as educators enables teachers to detect aspects of children's everyday learning experience from home that could be adapted for use in school (Leighton, Hightower, Wrigley, 1995). In order to understand the most important aspect about ELL students, it is important that the teacher become knowledgeable about the students’ cultural background. One way to accomplish this task is to become familiar with a student’s background by reading multicultural literature on the students’ culture, tradition, religion, and beliefs. Engage with the parents and family members to get the most important information about the student to know how the student learns. Once the educator has learned the students’ cultural background, it will be easier to instruct the student and for the student to learn.
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’
“Schools are changing in ways that, up until a few years ago, we thought unimaginable. Today, schools are more diverse than ever, and those trends will continue into the future. Unfortunately, teachers and schools have not always met the challenge of linguistic and cultural diversity” (Laureate, 2014). We must take the opportunity to get to know our students in order to recognize and value their uniqueness. “Teachers must work to understand the cultures of their students in a meaningful way, which involves recognizing the beliefs, values, and behaviors that characterize the various cultures of their students. Students themselves can be a valuable resource in learning about a culture” (Trail, 2000). Observations are a valuable method of assessment. Through observations, teachers can take note on students’ development, learning styles, students’ needs, and cultural influences. Teachers can use these notes to make better choices that impact student learning. These observations and interactions will also help us learn about other cultures. Having the opportunity to observe and interact with the students will equip you with information that cannot be learned from a book.
Culture is a powerful influence plays a big role in our interactions. Culture may also impact parenting style and a developing child. Having a strong sense of their own cultural history and the traditions associated with it helps children build a positive cultural identity for themselves. This also supports children’s sense of belonging and, by extension, their mental health and wellbeing. This class is crucial in understanding and working well parents, staff, and children. An effective educator understands how students’ cultures affect their perceptions, self-esteem, values, classroom behavior, and learning. As director, I need to use that understanding to help my students and staff feel welcomed, affirmed, respected, and valued. One way that I can do this is by using multicultural literature, especially children’s literature, to honor students’ culture and foster cross-cultural understanding. If cultural differences are not understood by teachers and management, it can lead to miscommunication and misunderstandings on both sides. It will be my job to do all I can to overcome both language and cultural differences to ensure a positive learning environment for