Ladson-Billing In Schools Chapter 2 Summary

Chapter 2 begins with a quote from Matthew 2:12 stating “But when they returned to their own land, they didn’t go through Jerusalem… for God had warned them in a dream to go home another way.” Ladson-Billings uses this as an analogy for the subpar “conventional” instruction that teachers receive concerning African American children in their teacher preparation programs and from their administrators, and how following those instructions would ultimately lead to the “intellectual death of the child.” Ladson-Billings overviews the concepts of cultural congruency, cultural appropriateness, cultural responsiveness, and cultural compatibility. These terms refer to the way teachers can adapt their language and teaching style to better reflect the culture and the language of their students. However, the problems students of color face, particularly African American students, goes beyond the school culture and climate not reflecting their community culture and climate. The primary issue is a lack of cultural synchronization among teachers and students and a need for culturally relevant practices. Cultural relevance goes beyond the issues of language that cultural

Winfield’s cross-classification system “Behaviors Toward Academically At-Risk Students.” In this cross classification system, teachers fall under four possible behavior patterns: tutors, general contractors, custodians, or referral agents. Tutors seek improvement from their students, and accept responsibility for their students’ successes and failures; general contractors believe that students can improve, but shift the responsibility of improvement onto others; custodians do not believe the students can improve, but assumes responsibility for the lack of success; referral agents do not believe students can improve, but shift the responsibility onto other members of the school