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At the beginning of the year, while I was waiting to see what interests started popping up for Inquiries, we spent time getting to know each other and building our community! Of course, we read books to get us thinking. Here is one the kids loved that talked about how our facial features are different.

The next day, we had a discussion about what practice means. They did a beautiful job for a first try, but if they did it again, do they think they would do better, worse, or the same? They all felt they would do better! We discussed that practice helps us get better! So we tried again and they felt that their second try was even better than the first.

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At the beginning of the year, while I was waiting to see what interests started popping up for Inquiries, we spent time getting to know each...

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Ready for Rigor Framework for Culturally Responsive Teaching

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Ready for Rigor Framework for Culturally Responsive Teaching

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Culturally Responsive Teaching is an approach that leverages the strengths that students of color bring to the classroom to make learning more relevant and effective. A major goal of Culturally Responsive Teaching is to reverse patterns of underachievement for students of color. Culturally Responsive Teaching requires teachers to recognize the cultural capital and tools that students of color bring to the classroom and to utilize their students' cultural learning tools throughout instruction.

Although Culturally Responsive Teaching is inclusive of working with students from diverse home language groups, linguistically responsive teaching is called out in Sharroky Hollie's book, Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Teaching and Learning (2017). Its essence also lies in viewing students with home languages (other than Standard English) as assets that they bring to the classroom rather than deficits.

Principle one of California's English Learner Roadmap expresses the needs for culturally and linguistically relevant education stating, "The languages and cultures English learners bring to their education are assets for their own learning and are important contributions to learning communities."

Drawing on extensive Culturally Responsive Teaching research, New America in their article "Culturally Responsive Teaching: A 50-State Survey of Teaching Standards" (PDF) , cites eight competencies that culturally responsive educators possess:

Competency

Description

1. Reflect on one's cultural lens

Culturally Responsive Educators (CREs) are reflective about their own group memberships that may be based on race, ethnicity, social class, and/or gender. They are cognizant that their life experiences and those group memberships may create biases that can influence their interactions with students, families, and colleagues.

2. Recognize and redress bias in the system

CREs recognize that their students' access to educational opportunities may be influenced by their social markers (e.g., race, ethnicity, social class and language) and advocate for all students to have access to high-quality teachers and schools.

3. Draw on students' culture to shape curriculum and instruction

CREs draw on their students' cultures and life experiences when planning their instruction and reject instructional materials that contain cultural biases and/or stereotypes. They supplement the curriculum if it lacks the representation of their students' heritage.

4. Bring real-world issues into the classroom

CREs connect their curriculum to real-world problems and ask students to consider solutions to them. These issues may involve injustices that exist in their communities or nationwide. Through this process, CREs empower their students to see themselves as change agents that can right the injustices that exist in the world.

5. Model high expectations for all students

CREs hold high academic expectations for all students and believe that all students are capable of academic success.

6. Promote respect for student differences

CREs are models for how all students should respect one another and embrace their fellow classmate's social, cultural, and linguistic differences.

7. Collaborate with families and the local community

CREs work to break down barriers that may keep students' families from participating in their children's education (i.e., work schedules, language barriers). CREs make efforts to learn about the families and community in which they teach.

8. Communicate in linguistically and culturally responsive ways

CREs understand and honor both the verbal and nonverbal culturally-influenced communication styles of the community in which they teach. They also seek to communicate with parents that speak a home language other than English by utilizing translation services.

Resources
California's English Learner Roadmap Principles Overview
Geneva Gay, Culturally Responsive Teaching: Theory, Research, and Practice, Teachers College Press (2000).

Jenny Muñiz, "The 'Rigor Gap' Affects English Learners, New Study Finds" , New America (2019), accessed October 2019.

Jenny Muñiz, "Culturally Responsive Teaching A 50-State Survey of Teaching Standards" (PDF) , New America (2019), accessed October 2019.

Sharroky Hollie, Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Teaching and Learning-Classroom Practices for Student Success, Shell Education (2017).

Zaretta Hammond, Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain, Corwin (2015).

Questions: Teacher and Leader Policy Office | TLPO@cde.ca.gov | 916-445-7331

Last Reviewed: Thursday, March 9, 2023

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Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Teaching leverages and utilizes the cultural learning tools that students bring to the classroom.

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Setting up a classroom family photo display is a great way to build a positive classroom community.

Today, I'm going to share a letter you can send home requesting a family photo, as well as some adorable classroom displays.

Parent Letter Requesting Photo

First up, you will want to send home a letter requesting a family photo. When you send this letter home to the parents, you will want to explain your purpose and plans for a classroom display.

You can write your own, or you can purchase a pre-made parent letter HERE or on Teachers Pay Teachers.

There are two versions included with your download, including a black and white and a full color printable pdf. Simply sign and date, and send it home with the kids.

Classroom Family Photo Displays

After you send home the parent letter requesting a family photo, you will want to create an area to display the photos.

Your classroom family photo display area can be a bulletin board, door display, on the side of a filing cabinet, in the reading nook, or wherever you'd like.

Here are some examples, found on pinterest, of family photo display areas that can easily be replicated.

What kind of display do you think you will create? Grab your parent letter here, and enjoy the adorable family photos that will flow in!

Before you go, here are more posts you'll enjoy:
185 Fun Question of the Day Kids Love 35 Ideas for Indoor Recess 18 Transition Songs for the Classroom
Classroom Family Photo Display

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10 Classroom Family Photo Display Ideas - Little Learning Corner

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10 Classroom Family Photo Display Ideas Setting up a classroom family photo display is a great way to build a positive classroom community. Today, I'm going to share a letter you can send home requesting a family photo, as well as some adorable classroom displays. Parent Letter Requesting Photo First up, you will want [...]

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Start the Year with Hexagonal Identity One-Pagers - Spark Creativity

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When it comes to the first day of school, what you want is a rock solid activity you can enjoy from the background. Or is that just me? There's enough stress around that first day

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Identity Portraits

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fa6BSxIpbN4

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Read by the author:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uc16P3ZaDaY

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https://www.alwaysanjali.com/

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Culturally Relevant Pedagogy is a theoretical model that focuses on multiple aspects of student achievement and supports students to uphold their cultural identities. Culturally Relevant Pedagogy also calls for students to develop critical perspectives that challenge societal inequalities.

Gloria Ladson-Billings proposed three main components of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy: (a) a focus on student learning and academic success, (b) developing students' cultural competence to assist students in developing positive ethnic and social identities, and (c) supporting students' critical consciousness or their ability to recognize and critique societal inequalities. All three components need to be utilized.

Three Components of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy

Student Learning

The students' intellectual growth and moral development, but also their ability to problem-solve and reason.

Cultural Competence

Skills that support students to affirm and appreciate their culture of origin while developing fluency in at least one other culture.

Critical Consciousness

The ability to identify, analyze, and solve real-world problems, especially those that result in societal inequalities.

Resources

Django Paris and H. Samy Alim eds., Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies: Teaching and Learning for Justice in a Changing World, Chapter 8, Teachers College Press (2017)

Gloria Ladson-Billings, G. (1994). The Dreamkeepers. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishing Co.

Gloria Ladson-Billings, "Toward a Theory of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy" (PDF) , American Educational Research Journal, Vol. 32, No. 3 , accessed January 2020.

Questions: Teacher and Leader Policy Office | TLPO@cde.ca.gov | 916-445-7331

Last Reviewed: Thursday, March 09, 2023

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Culturally Relevant Pedagogy helps students to uphold their cultural identities while developing fluency in at least one other culture.

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Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy -CA Dept. of Ed

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Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy -CA Dept. of Ed

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Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy builds on decades of asset-based pedagogical research including Culturally Relevant Pedagogy (Ladson-Billings) and Culturally Responsive (Gay and Hammond) and Linguistic (Hollie) Pedagogy.

Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy affirms and respects the key components of the Asset-Based Pedagogies that preceded it, but also takes them to the next level. Instead of just accepting or affirming the backgrounds of students of color as seen in Culturally Relevant Pedagogy; or connecting to students' cultural knowledge, prior experiences, and frames of reference as we see in Culturally Responsive Pedagogy; Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy views schools as places where the cultural ways of being in communities of color are sustained, rather than eradicated.

Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy promotes equality across racial and ethnic communities and seeks to ensure access and opportunity. Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy also supports students to critique and question dominant power structures in societies.

Django Paris and H. Samy Alim describe the key features across culturally sustaining educational settings in an Education Week Author Interview: 'Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies' .

Feature

What it Looks Like

Students' languages, literacies, and cultural ways of being are centered meaningfully and consistently in classroom learning instead of being considered as "add-ons."

Educators and schools are in conversation with communities about what they desire and want to sustain through schooling.

Educators connect present learning to the histories of racial, ethnic, and linguistic communities both locally and nationally.

Educators value and sustain the cultural and linguistic practices of the community while providing access to the dominant culture (white, middle class, and standard English speaking).

Resources

H. Samy Alim and Django Paris, eds., Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies: Teaching and Learning for Justice in a Changing World, Teachers College Press (2017).

Gloria Ladson-Billings, "Culturally Relevant Pedagogy 2.0: a.k.a. the Remix" , Harvard Educational Review (Volume 84, Number 1, p.74-84, Spring 2014), accessed October 2019.

Ferlazzo and Paris, "Author Interview: 'Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies'" , EdWeek (2017), accessed January 2020.

Culturally Sustaining/Revitalizing Pedagogy

Culturally Sustaining/Revitalizing Pedagogy extends Paris and Alim's research to Native American learners. The Western colonization of the United States historically erased Native American culture, belief systems, and languages. Culturally Sustaining/Revitalizing Pedagogy specifically relates to reclaiming or revitalizing what Native American learners lost through the process of colonization.

Most Native American learners in the United States attend schools outside of reservations and constitute very small percentages of public school populations. Disparities on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, as well as in graduation rates, overrepresentation in special education, and college completion rates are evident when comparing Native American students to their White counterparts.

Culturally Sustaining/Revitalizing Pedagogy is a promising practice in utilizing Native culture and language to positively impact Native learners' achievement. Deeply embedded in these practices is the teaching of Native languages in order to allow students to deeply connect with their cultural communities. Culturally Sustaining/Revitalizing Pedagogy ensures that Native culture is present throughout the curriculum as well.

Resources

Michelle M. Jacob, Leilani Sabzalian, Joana Jansen, Tary J. Tobin, Claudia G. Vincent, and Kelly M. LaChance, "The Gift of Education: How Indigenous Knowledges Can Transform the Future of Public Education" (PDF) , International Journal of Multicultural Education (Volume 20, Number 1, 2018), accessed October 2019.

Teresa L. McCarty and Tiffany S. Lee, "Critical Culturally Sustaining/Revitalizing Pedagogy and Indigenous Education Sovereignty" , Harvard Educational Review, accessed October 2019.

Questions: Teacher and Leader Policy Office | TLPO@cde.ca.gov | 916-445-7331

Last Reviewed: Thursday, March 09, 2023

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Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy builds upon the Asset-Based Pedagogies that came before it but presents the need to not only affirm and connect to students' cultural backgrounds, but also to sustain them through schooling.