Level of Cultural Responsiveness in Your Teaching, Part II

I watch a DVD by Dr. Eugene Garcia called, “Culturally Responsive Teaching.” The responsive are divided into 6 components:

1. Respect
2. Responsive
3. Responsible
4. Resourceful
5. Reasonable
6. Theory Driven

In the video, Dr. Eugene Garcia explains how to work effectively with all students and families by expounding on these important components and how they have an affect on learning that goes on in our classroom. After watching the DVD, I saw that I could be more culturally responsive in my teaching. The fifth component, Reasonable, stuck me like a bolt of lightning. Culturally Responsive Teaching is a pedagogy that recognizes the importance of including students' culture when designing a lesson. Dr. Garcia explained being reasonable, is when you don’t know what to do, you have to use your gut feelings. Do what you think is right. Don’t take something off the shelf that wasn’t designed for your diverse mix of students and use it in your lesson. Don’t insist that kids learn English before you help them. To many times, we as teachers rely on that thing called the curriculum. I know I have to deviate sometimes from the lesson and work on a particular issue with my class, but I don’t. I want to keep pace with the curriculum. Because I have a diverse mix of students in my classroom, that’s when I have to put down the cookie cutter and say, it’s time to teach. If I have to, I should be creative, and come out the box. Use strategies that will enhance learning in my classroom. I have to put trust in my gut feelings, because I have to deal with these students’ day in and day out. I have to remember that my classroom is not a factory and my students are not just rolling off an assembly line. My students are human being made up of multiple cultures, and languages. They practice different religions, perspective and life styles. They use different learning styles and are at different levels of abilities. Multiple Intelligences has to be factor in when I am teaching a particular skill to my class. I have to realize that knowing the learning style will help me develop strategies to compensate for student weaknesses and capitalize on their strengths. This component can be very scary for new teachers to use, because you might not want to bump heads with supervisors, but you have to be there for your kids 180 days, no one else. They not going to learn if you just lecture to them and tell them what they should know and then test them on what they remember. That’s why my English language learners give me a blank stare in my face at times. So starting next week, will implement this Reasonable component in my repertoire full time, so that I can be more culturally responsive.

Level of Cultural Responsiveness in Your Teaching

I recently watch a DVD by Dr. Roland Tharp called “CREDE Standards.” CREDE is an acronym that stands for Center for Research on Education, Diversity, and Excellence. The five standards are:

1. Teachers and Students Working Together

2. Developing Language and Literacy Skills across all Curriculum

3. Connecting Lessons to Students' Lives

4. Engaging Students with Challenging Lessons

5. Emphasizing Dialogue over Lectures

Today, I like to talk about the standard that I effectively implement in my classroom that is 75% Hispanic. That is the first standard, Teachers and student working together. The idea is to use instructional group activities in which students and teacher work together to create a product or idea. Dr. Tharp noted in his video the teacher’s primary role in the beginning is to assist students to work together first, then find out what they need. We as teachers are so ready to just lecture, assign pages to read independently and test students. If you have ELL students that struggle with English, they would have a difficult time with you if just lectured to them. ELL students get lost in a single dialogue classroom. But if you use different strategies such as Visual Scaffolding, one of 50 strategies mentioned in Herrell & Jordan Book, 50 Strategies for Teaching English Language Learners, to stimulate prior learning, and include Cooperative Learning, another one of 50 strategies, so that all students work together in small group to promote more student centered instruction. Using these strategies really has helped me in my classroom. The ELL students, who usually struggle with English, are getting help from each other and other ELL students who may be a little more advanced than them. The idea of Teachers and Students Working Together to promote learning makes my job easier. Instead of running around helping 30 plus student who didn’t understand my lecture, I can now walk around assisting 4 to 5 groups.

Tomorrow, I will talk about ways I could be more culturally responsive in my teaching.