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You’ve heard a lot about the achievement gap, but there is less talk about what causes it in the first place. The achievement gap is created by opportunity gaps that prevent many students, in particular students of color and students from low-paid family backgrounds, from accessing the educational and social supports they need. Schools of Opportunity is a research-informed program that recognizes high schools that demonstrate their ability to close opportunity gap and do their part to create rich learning opportunities for every student. The project offers a positive vision of school quality and school improvement—as an alternative to test-based accountability policies and a deficit narrative. Take a moment to watch this short video and hear directly from students at one School of Opportunity about the difference this can make.

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Some indicate they would go out of their way to give these students special treatment. Others talk about tough love, looking for a way to establish a connection, not being overly reactive to their anger while holding them to the same standards of behavior as other students.

These are the opening moments in a workshop on racial, cultural, and social class sensitivity in a teaching intern class at San Francisco State.

I want to be clear that neither my class nor this post is about racism per se. Most of those students were glad to be teaching in culturally diverse environments. But every one of them, like me, also needed to become more aware of the subtle insensitivities and prejudices that even good liberals harbor.

Subtle Prejudice Towards African-American Males

We then watched a short scene from the film Higher Learning. Two newly-arrived freshmen at a Southern California university enter a dormitory elevator. One is an African American male. The other is a blond, very upper-middle-class-attired, young woman. She looks at him from the corner of her eyes and then places both hands firmly on her pocketbook, He sees her do this, rolls his eyes, and subtly shakes his head with a knowing smile as they emerge from the elevator.

I asked the students to describe what they saw and indicate whether any of that resonates with them. Two of my African American male students said that it happens to them all the time. I asked them to explore possible reasons for her response, and also discuss whether she would have had the same response to an African American female. Overwhelmingly they agree that, for this scene, the student had to be male.

I then shared a story. I'd recently spent time assisting, teaching, and interviewing students in Woodside High School. It's in a wealthy area south of San Francisco that has many African American students bussed in from lower-income East Palo Alto. In the class I was observing, I noticed that the female white teacher had established a close rapport with three African American girls, but that the moment two tall African American boys walked into class each day, she tensed up. She never called on them, and her behavior showed fear and discomfort. I interviewed these boys. They felt this continually. They were good kids and fit no stereotype of potential delinquents. The problem was hers, and she was unaware of how differently she responded. I worked with her to get her through that fear, learn to relax with them, and engage in some of the occasional banter she had with the girls.

Examining One's Own Prejudices and Insensitivities as a Teacher

The famed psychologist Fritz Perls wrote, "Contact is the appreciation of differences." My goal with my workshop students wasn't to help increase tolerance, but rather to develop appreciation and contact. Tolerance certainly beats intolerance. But if I just tolerate you, it's a far cry from connecting. And to work effectively with students, we need to connect to them.

On the second day of the workshop, I assigned a one- to two-page paper in which students examined their own prejudices. To model this self-reflection regarding racial, cultural, and social-class attitudes and feelings that could get in the way of their teaching, I first shared some of mine. I told them that although I had friends and/or close colleagues of different races, cultures, and sexual orientations, I was still working on my own subtle insensitivities and prejudices.

Students wrote their papers in class and shared in small groups, reading each other's work. They then discussed how these attitudes and feelings might interfere with their reaching some kids, and how they might begin to change. I believed that their new awareness would lead to change for most of these interns.

A Tale of Two Letters: Cultural and Social Class Prejudice Explored

For the final workshop exercise, I handed out a copy of a letter written by two Asian parents to the teacher of their two boys. The letter described how the parents felt their boys were being discriminated against by the teacher, ignored at times and unfairly chastised at other times. Now here's the catch: half of the letters were written in perfect English on the letterhead of a university. The other half, containing exactly the same content, were written in broken English with many grammatical and spelling errors. The interns didn't know this. The letters were loosely based on a real case and were designed by my colleague Dr. Penelope Flores.

The teacher interns then wrote a response to the parents, after which I disclosed the differences in the two letters, before having them get into small groups mixing students who had received and responded to each of the letters. They shared their responses. Before the groups dispersed, I asked them to decide if there was a difference in tone and/or content between those who had the letter from the university professor parents and those who had the letter from the less-educated, probably new immigrant, parents. In every single group, the students agreed that there was a clear difference in tone and content and that the less-educated parents had been responded to with more condescension and less respect.

The message was clear and needed no further elaboration.

To conclude the workshop I had them role-play, in groups of three, a meeting between the two parents and the teacher. My questions after the role-play were:

1. To what extent did the teacher begin by first listening to the parents and hearing their concerns?

2. To what extent were they able to take the role of the parents and really appreciate how they felt?

3. Was there real contact established?

Again the message was clear.

By now, the workshop's primary goals should be obvious:

An examination of one's prejudices; an effort to truly understand and take the role of the other; the development of an appreciation of differences, and, hopefully, the establishment of real contact. All are necessary for effective teaching and connecting to all students.

Now for a moment, imagine if this type of training were required of the police in every community, not just Ferguson.

Further Exploration and the Implications Beyond the Classroom

There are many resources providing similar work with kids of all ages, but here are some of my favorites. First, English teachers might think about using the story "String Music" from The Martini Shot by George Pelecanos, a writer who really understands African-American adolescents.

Then take a look at each of these:

As an educator, how do you approach racial and cultural sensitivity issues?

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Approaching Racial and Cultural Sensitivity | Edutopia

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Some indicate they would go out of their way to give these students special treatment. Others talk about tough love, looking for a way to establish a connection, not being overly reactive to their anger while holding them to the same standards of behavior as other students.

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Megan Farnsworth is an Associate Professor of Special Education at Southern Oregon University. In this article written for Colorín Colorado, she explores different kinds of culture and explains the impact that culture can have not only on a child's experience in school but on how teachers interpret and evaluate that experience.

Video bonus: Dr. Alba Ortiz discusses the impact that culture can have on behavior in the classroom.

Recently, a colleague of mine approached me in the staff lounge ten minutes before school started. She exclaimed, "Rosa just isn't getting anything. I'm a bit frustrated because she's been here for two and half years, and I think she has a learning disability. I know the complications with standardized assessments, so I can't rely on those. What should I do? How can I teach her?" I am not surprised by this question, for general education teachers have been asking me it consistently over the numerous years I have been providing English Language Development to English Language Learners (ELLs) in both Oregon and Arizona.

I wanted to tell my colleague that I have been in her shoes. The first year I taught school was in a sixth grade classroom in central California. I had received my certificate for teaching Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CLD) students in my credential program, which was like training for an open water swim in a lap pool. That first year, 60% of my students were ELLs and I was overwhelmed with the language differences in my classroom. I did not know how to teach them, and referred two students in the beginning stages of language acquisition for assessment of SPED services. Like many teachers, I had confused language acquisition with a learning disability (Ortiz & Yates, 2002; Abedi, 2000).

Understanding the Needs of ELLs

During my years as a district ELL specialist, I attended more and more Child Study Team meetings, discussing why my CLD students were "failing." Over 25% of my students had been referred for assessment for Special Education (SPED) services, which is consistent with the national average (Artiles, Rueda, Salazar, & Higareda, 2000). Over-representation of CLDs in special education remains a problem even after forty years of inquiry (Artiles, Kozleski, Trent, Osher, & Ortiz, 2010). While the issue is complex, one factor contributing to the over-representation of CLD students in special education is that most general and special education teachers do not have adequate training for working with CLD learners, nor understanding of the specific needs of ELLs (Kushner & Ortiz, 2000).

Cultural factors

Over- and Under-Identification of ELLs with Disabilities

For more information on the challenges of appropriately identifying ELLs with disabilities, see our related resource section and videos.

Important cultural factors that affect teaching and learning need to be examined, for culture may be more influential than language in obtaining educational achievement. Culture becomes an invisible script that directs us through our daily decision making processes. Culture enables or constrains us, by blinding us to those who are different than us (Hollins, 2008).

For example, teachers and students from the dominant culture (i.e., Euro-American, middle class, monolingual standard English speaking) tend to be field independent (i.e., detail oriented and analytically inclined), value competition, and individual accomplishment (Banks & Banks, 2010). Culturally and Linguistically Diverse students tend to be field dependent, approach learning intuitively rather than analytically and logical, and tend to perform better in cooperative learning contexts (Gollnick & Chinn, 2009). This cultural mismatch contributes to teachers' misunderstandings about student achievement. (See more about the differences between individual and collective cultural orientation in the book Managing Diverse Classrooms: How to Build on Students' Cultural Strengths.)

The Teacher Perspective

Teachers play a pivotal role in determining the quality of opportunities, experiences, and outcomes that students receive in schools (Gay, 1997). Since teachers bring their own cultural lens (e.g., values and beliefs) into the classroom, they may unintentionally attempt to encourage students to conform to their values and beliefs (Hollins, 2008), which potentially can marginalize students who do not share the same cultural lens. As teachers, we must critically examine our beliefs and attitudes toward language and diversity by questioning our assumptions of CLD students (Gay & Kirkland, 2003).

I also wanted to encourage my colleague to examine her expectations of Rosa, for teachers' expectations have a profound effect on student performances (Brophy & Good, 1974), especially among students from stigmatized groups (Jussim & Harber, 2005). Research shows that a teacher's degree of concern about a CLD student's needs is an important factor in referral to SPED (Algozzine & Ysseldyke, 1981), which is higher in a school with low minority enrollment (Collier, 1987) such as ours, with only 6% CLD enrollment. The cultural mismatch between teachers and students contributes to teachers' interpretation of CLD students' behaviors in the classroom.

In interpreting student behaviors, teachers must look at the three cultures in the classroom:

1) the culture of the student (i.e., values and beliefs students bring to the classroom)

2) the culture of the school (i.e., existing values, expectations and practices)

3) the resulting culture in the classroom (i.e., students' practices intersecting with school practices) (Gallego & Cole, 2001; Personal communication, Artiles, 2007).

Let's explore these different kinds of cultures through Rosa's story and what I learned about her as I looked for ways to support my colleague.

Culture of the Student

Funds of Knowledge

Culture and cognition are intertwined, and are negotiated through social interaction (Rogoff, 2002). For example, a student like Rosa comes to school with a vast amount of rich experiences that contribute to her knowledge, skills and perspectives called, funds of knowledge (González, Moll, & Amanti, 2005). Funds of knowledge are seen as household practices, daily activities, and how people think about what they do. Families accumulate bodies of beliefs, ideas, skills, and abilities based on their experiences in response to larger societal forces (e.g. social class, gender, religion) that affect the situations of students and their families (Moll, 2014).

This premise is driven by an equity agenda that advocates for educators to build on students and their families' knowledge and experiences as resources for connecting schooling practices. Funds of knowledge are most effectively uncovered through methods such as:

observations in and out of the classroom

student surveys

parent/family surveys or home visits.

Surveys or visits often begin with how and when the family arrived at the recent location and challenges they have faced. Collecting narratives of occupations, mobility, views of roles as caretakers, and how the family is connected to group support and access to economic resources (i.e., sociocultural capital) are important sources of funds of knowledge (Hollins, 2008). After observing Rosa at school, and sending home a survey (in Spanish), I located some of Rosa's cultural assets (see Table 1 for examples).

TABLE 1: Rosa's CULTURAL ASSETS

Cultural Assets

Student--Rosa

Social and Emotional Needs

The social and emotional needs of a child experiencing problems in the classroom may be both negatively and positively affected by changing from the home culture/language to that of the mainstream classroom. The differing culture change patterns of CLD children must be taken into consideration in assessment and instruction. The effects upon language, cognitive style, personality, and self concept affects development of a child's full potential, especially when the child may have special learning/behavior problems in schools (Collier, 1987). Rosa's family fled Honduras to escape violence, which creates the obstacles of acculturative stress, anxiety, homesickness and separation from support networks that affect creating positive interpersonal relationships.

Although Rosa has been in the U.S. two and one-half years, she can still experience acculturative stress that may manifest by deviant behavior, psychosomatic symptoms and feelings of marginality (Berry, 1970, as cited in Collier, 1987). This type of stress has particular implications for educators as the side effects look similar to Emotional Behavioral Disabilities, and used to place children in special education classes (Hoover, 2004; Collier, 1987). Students must learn the language of instruction and the content at the same time, as well as learn to participate in the classroom community. As a result, academic competence may be compromised by students need to develop social competence (Rymes & Pash, 2001). Students may show "passing" (Goffman, 1981), by looking to their peers' cues, instead of drawing on their own experiences. Therefore, performance may reflect the child's degree of acculturation to middle-class Western cultural norms and behaviors, and the culture of the school.

Culture of the School

Academic Discourse

U.S. schools often still operate under an efficiency model, which measures students against a "norm" of Euro-American middle class expectations, with hidden cultural rules and correct language usage. Some rules of language are explicitly stated with passage of legislation including English-Only laws (e.g., Arizona), but hidden rules also occur in academic discourse patterns. Specialized discourse patterns occur in literacy practices such as:

quizzing

questioning patterns

narrative styles

read-alouds.

Students must acquire the discourses of the school, and be able to communicate in them fluently for their performances to be perceived by others as successful (Hawkins, 2004). Rosa does not use academic discourse patterns, so she has the potential to be marginalized. Classroom texts and teachers' belief systems are also cultural scripts and measure the acceptance of the "right" answer (Mehan, 1984). Students must align themselves with the teacher's knowledge to answer the question correctly, whether or not their background knowledge informs them of a different answer. Even when asking open-ended questions, teachers still may look for the "right" answer (Rymes & Pash, 2001).

Some children are socialized with academic discourses, and others are not. Middle-class Euro-American parents often segregate children from the adult world in child-focused activities, and play language games that involve test questions in the same format as academic discourses (Rogoff, 2003). Martini & Kirkpatrick (1996) found that parents ask their children about their day and helped them organize "reports" by restating children's words in academic discourse. My colleague can provide students like Rosa with safe opportunities to practice academic ways of talking (O'Connor & Michaels, 1996).

Storytelling

Expectations for academic discourse also exist in the right way to tell a story (Michaels, 1981). Children from middle-to upper-middle-class families typically use narrative styles in their homes containing story grammars consistent with ones used at school (e.g., characters, setting, problem and solution) (Heath, 1983). If teachers expect students' stories to follow a linear script, they overlook how CLD children use narratives in many contexts (Scott, Straker & Katz, 2009). Acquiring a standard format facilitates success in responding to standardized tests, but teachers need to accept children's sociocultural narrative styles in developing oral literacy (Bloome et al., 2001). Children tell stories not in isolation, but through interactions with peers and adults who help them make sense of their world. Stories are derived from real or imagined experiences, and contain cultural forms from the groups they belong to (Street, 1993).

For example, when Rosa retold me a story, she added personal experiences that were not included in the original version. The original story consisted of a linear story line about a dog who tried to cross a river, got stuck in the middle, and then was rescued by a boy with a stick. The story Rosa retold followed a similar linear organization; however, the boy was transformed into a security guard who employed several resources to complete the rescue. My task was to make a decision if this "version" of her story retell was acceptable.

In accepting her version as an effort to integrate her background experiences with her current identity, I can affirm Rosa's retell due to my belief in accepting multiple narratives as valid. My colleague can discover ways Rosa's family tells stories by assigning homework in which Rosa's parents tell her a story, and then Rosa retells it in class. In this way, teachers can bridge home to school in creating culturally responsive literacy practices.

Culture of the Classroom

The culture created in the classroom is a result of the moment-to-moment interactions of the school's history meeting the child's history. A teacher's educational background, experiences, behavior management, personality, motivations, instructional paradigm, and commitment to social justice all have an impact on her ability to create an inclusive environment of equity. Critical dispositions that contribute to teachers' successful interactions across cultures include empathy and open-mindedness. Empathy refers to one's ability to empathize with the feelings, thoughts, and behaviors of those from a different cultural background. Being open-minded includes demonstrating an open and unprejudiced attitude toward different groups and toward different cultural norms and values. Gutierrez, Baquedano-Lopez, & Tejada (1999) describe safety in the equitable classroom referred to as the "third space" for those seeking to explore intersections of knowledge that foster growth in students' voices.

Transformation occurs when students and teachers cultural assets are combined in a community of learners. Instead of top-down teaching, the teacher connects with students to find the best answers to student driven topics. The teacher facilitates success through a variety of activities to explore academic discourse (e.g., socratic seminar or "dinner party" where students role play different characters), and participant structures (e.g. whole class, small group, one-on-one, fishbowl). Teachers also balance activities rooted in individualism (independent tasks) and collectivism (e.g., buddy reading, choral reading, cooperative learning groups, Think-Pair Share, Phone a Friend options).

Classroom Connection

After getting to know Rosa better, I followed up with my colleague by offering to help plan lessons that build on Rosa's cultural assets. For example, when teaching about the Oregon Trail (4 th grade Oregon social studies curriculum), she can connect Rosa's knowledge of moving from one place to another, as well as her agricultural background to major concepts of the Oregon Trail. By creating opportunities for a) Rosa's background knowledge to be valued, and b) Rosa to be a leader in her classroom, her teacher can create equitable classrooms that promote growth in students' voices.

Cognitive development occurs as people learn from more experienced others. One concept of participation is that students participate in later situations according to how they relate to previous ones (Rogoff, 2003). Seeing the connection between the old and new situations involves support from a more skilled participant, who can help the child see the applicability to classroom activities. For students to generalize appropriately across experiences, apprenticeship helps in deciding which strategies relate to each other, and which approaches fit different circumstances. Rosa's teachers need to make explicit, (e.g, think-alouds or task analysis) the skills and strategies needed to negotiate different types of problems, and then make explicit connections between them. Assigning an older mentor (e.g., 2-4 years older) can help scaffold opportunities to help students become responsible for their own learning and solving problems both in and out of the classroom.

Final Thoughts

Regardless of obtaining a label, we still have to teach Rosa. Obtaining the label is not the goal, but discovering the environment (including type of instruction) in which she is most successful is. If we are to serve Rosa, we must revisit goals the school holds for her, her family holds for her, and she herself holds. Success is most often achieved together, as collaboration is a truly culturally responsive practice.

In order to determine eligibility for special education services, an evaluation team must decide if the CLD's learning or behavior problems are primarily due to language and cultural factors (See reauthorization of IDEA, 2004). Therefore, we need to become familiar with our cultural factors that affect our teaching, and students' cultural factors that affect learning. The solution is usually found in teachers' abilities to integrate students' home cultures with school cultures, resulting in a hybrid, third-space, inclusive classroom culture.

Dr. Alba Ortiz discusses the role that culture can play on behavior in the classroom.

References

Abedi, J. (2000, April). Confounding students' performance and their language background. Paper presented at the meeting of the American Educational Research Association. New Orleans, LA

Algozzine, B. & Ysseldyke, J. (1981). Special education services for normal children: Better safe than sorry? Exceptional Children, 48 (3), 238-243.

Artiles, A.J., Rueda, R., Salazar, I., & Higareda, I.(2000). Factors associated with English learner representation in special education: Emerging evidence from urban school districts in California. Paper presented at the conference on Minority Issues in Special Education in the public schools, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA

Artiles, A.J. Kozleski, E.B., Trent, S.C., Osher, D. & Ortiz, A. (2010). Justifying and explaining disproportionality; 1968-2008: A critique of underlying views and culture. Exceptional Children, (76)3, 279-299.

Banks, J. & Banks, C. (2010). Multicultural perspectives: Issues and perspectives. Wiley & Sons.

Bloome, D., Champion, T., Katz, L., Morton, M.B., & Muldrow, R. (2001). Spoken and written narrative development: African American Preschoolers as storytellers and storymakers. In Harris, JL., Kamhi, A.G., & Pollock, K.E. (Eds.). Literacy in African Amercian communities. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Brophy, T. & Good, T. (1974). Teacher-Student relationships: Causes and consequences. New York: Holt

Collier, C. (1987). Comparison of acculturation and education characteristics of referred and nonreferred culturally and linguistically different children. NABE Theory, Research and Application: Selected Papers, 1987, L. M. Malare (Ed.), Buffalo, NY: State University of New York at Buffalo, pp. 183-195.

Gallego, M. A., Cole, M., & The Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition (LCHC) (2001). Classroom cultures and cultures in the classroom. In V. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of research on teaching (4th ed.) Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association.

Gay, G. & Kirkland, K. (2003). Developing cultural critical consciousness and self-reflection in pre-service teacher education. Theory into Practice, 42(3), 181-187.

Gay, G. (1997). Curriculum for multicultural teacher education. In F.H. Klassen & D.M. Gollnick (Eds.), Pluralism and the American teacher: Issues and case studies (pp 31-62). Washington, D.C: American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, Ethnic Heritage Center for Teacher Education.

Goffman, E. (1981). Forms of Talk. In Duranti, L. (Ed.), Linguistic Anthropology: Cambridge University Press, 9, p.298.

Gollnick, D.M. & Chin, P.C. (2009). Multicultural education in a pluralistic society. Pearson

González, N., Moll, L., & Amanti, C. (Eds). (2005). Funds of knowledge: Theorizing practices in households, communities and classrooms. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Gutierrez, K., Baquedano-Lopez, P. & Tejada, C. (1999). Rethinking diversity: Hybridity and hybrid language practices in the third space. Mind, culture, and activity, 6(4), 286-303.

Hawkins, M (2004). Researching English language and literacy development in schools. Educational Researcher, 33(3) 14-25.

Heath, S.B. (1983). Ways with words: Language, life and work in communities and classrooms. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

Hollins, E. (2008). Culture in School Learning. London: Routledge.

Jussim, L. & Harber, K.D. (2005). Teacher expectations and self-fulfilling prophesies: Knowns and unknowns, resolved and unresolved controversies. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 9(2), 131-155.

Kushner, M. I. & Ortiz, A.A. (2000). The preparation of early childhood education teachers for English language learners. In New teachers for a new century: The future for early childhood professional development (pp. 124-154). Washington, DC:U.S. Department of Education, National Institute on Early Childhood Development and Education.

Martini M., & Kirkpatrick J. (1992). Parenting in Polynesia: a view from the Marquesas. In Roopnarine & Carter (Eds.) Parent-Child Socialization in Diverse Cultures: Annual Advances in Applied Developmental Psychology, Norwood, NJ: Ablex, pp. 199-222.

Mehan, Hugh (1984). Institutional Decision-Making In Rogoff, B. & Lave, J (Eds.) Everyday Cognition. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, pp. 41-66.

Michaels, S. (1981). Sharing time: Children's narrative style and differential access to literacy. Language in Society, 10, 423-432.

Moll, L. (2014). Funds of identities: A new concept based on the funds of knowledge approach. Culture & Psychology, 20,31-48.

O'Connor, M., & Michaels, S. (1996). Shifting participant frameworks: Orchestrating thinking practices in group discussions. In D. Hicks, (Ed.), Discourse, learning, and schooling. New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 63-103.

Ortiz, A. & Yates, J. (2002). Considerations in the assessment of English Language Learners referred to special education. In Artiles, A. & Ortiz, A. (Eds.) English Language Learners With Special Education Needs. Illinois: Center for Applied Linguistics.

Rogoff, B. (2002). The cultural nature of human development. New York: Oxford University

Rogoff, B., Paradise, R., Arauz, R.M., Correa-Cavez, M., & Angelillo, C. (2003). Firsthand learning through intent participation. Annual Review of Psychology, 54, 175-203.

Rymes, B. & Pash, D. (2001). Questioning Identity: The case of one second language learner. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 32(3), 276-300.

Scott, J.C., Straker, D.Y., & Katz, L. (2009). Affirming students right to their own language. New York: Routledge

Street, B. (1993). The new literacy studies: Guest editorial. Journal of Research in Reading, 16(2), 81-97.

Reprints

You are welcome to print copies or republish materials for non-commercial use as long as credit is given to Colorín Colorado and the author(s). For commercial use, please contact info@colorincolorado.org.

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Consider Culture Before Referral of Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students for Special Education Services

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Megan Farnsworth is an Associate Professor of Special Education at Southern Oregon University. In this article written for Colorín Colorado, she explores different kinds of culture and explains the impact that culture can have not only on a child's experience in school but on how teachers interpret and evaluate that experience.

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Deep Equity: Voices of Educators and Students

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Relationship Building Through Culturally Responsive Classroom Management

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Hone your skills like curiosity, listening, cultural sensitivity, and humor to provide all students with equitable opportunities for learning.

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The attempted assaults weren't fun, but I classified them as aberrations and moved on. What really unhinged me was that students didn't like me. And their scorn felt earned. Most of my memories of that year have been erased, but I'll always remember putting on my headphones, leaning my head against a bus window on the ride home from work, feeling numb, listening to Sign O the Times.

It took a decade for me to figure out what I did wrong -- a lot of little things, but one big thing. I didn't try hard enough to understand my kids -- I didn't understand their religion, their language, their relationships, their home lives, their poverty, their politics, their weekend visits to the rez, their history, or their dreams. And secondarily, I was too occupied with pretending I knew what I was doing to share anything real about myself.

Today we know more strategies for helping all kinds of students succeed. But none of them can work unless we learn to "see out of ourselves through our cracks and into others through theirs," says author John Green. Otherwise, it's like "looking at your window shade but never looking inside. But once the vessel cracks, the like can get in. The like can get out."

Research-Based Strategies for Working with Diverse Learners

A review of the research (PDF, 119KB) on teaching diverse learners sorts the "best practices" into four categories, summarized below:

1. High Expectations

Teachers address beliefs that lead to lower expectations of diverse students and persistently teach challenging curriculum.

2. Culturally Relevant Instruction

Instructors associate engaging curriculum with the knowledge, skills, values, and concerns that students bring with them from their home and community. Other practices include cooperative learning, extended dialogues to develop language and thinking skills, explicit teaching of cognitive strategies, and the use of technology to enhance instruction.

3. Caring Relationships

Teachers develop relationships with their students. They co-learn, co-teach, and co-research together.

4. Parent and Community Involvement

Instructors communicate with parents, and invite them into their children's learning process.

Working together, teachers, parents, and administrators can make significant progress in supporting diverse learners. Harrowgate Elementary School in Chester, Virginia, where 61 percent of the students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, struggled to involve parents. Harrowgate's solution was to initiate the Parent Partners Program that awards points to guardians for participating in different school events: parent-teacher conferences, PTA meetings, classroom service, any of the 40 yearly workshops, etc. "Parents responded to these new opportunities, making high parent involvement an embedded part of our culture," writes Linda Wood, Harrowgate Elementary School Principal, in NAESP's Best from the Best. "For the first time in our 50-year history, the PTA realized 100 percent membership!"

In the download for this blog post, you'll find a collection of tactics for enhancing those classroom conditions that boost academic achievement among diverse learners -- strategies that do not arise from the discredited cultural deficit model.

Ultimately, a teacher's goal at the end of a semester is to gaze upon the shadows of all our departing learners and see that our lessons taught them to reach for a patch of blue sky, bright with significance and purpose. And to keep reaching.

How are you remaking your classroom to foster learning among diverse students?

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Helping Diverse Learners Succeed | Edutopia

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The attempted assaults weren't fun, but I classified them as aberrations and moved on. What really unhinged me was that students didn't like me. And their scorn felt earned. Most of my memories of that year have been erased, but I'll always remember putting on my headphones, leaning my head against a bus window on the ride home from work, feeling numb, listening to Sign O the Times.

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The professional learning sequences in the equity in next gen learning toolkit build awareness of individuals' identity & privilege and the structures of power...

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Lecture halls of hundreds of students are as much a feature of undergraduate education as an achievement gap between different races and socioeconomic backgrounds (PDF, 1.2MB). Interestingly, the new study, authored by two biologists, suggests that the former influences the latter. Changing the way lectures work -- providing more student interaction and feedback (something educators call active learning) -- could begin to chip away at the achievement gap.

The Power of Active Learning

This new study looked at an introductory biology class at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that averaged nearly 400 students and was taught by one of the authors over six semesters -- three in a traditional lecture format and three through active learning. In the traditional lectures, black students and students whose parents did not attend college performed worse than white students on exams. But active learning made all students perform better than in lectures, halved the achievement gap for black students, and completely closed it for first-generation college goers. Specifically, white students increased by 3.2 percent, and black students increased by 6.3 percent in their exam performance. (The achievement gap between black and white students decreased from 5.6 percent in lecture classes to 2.5 percent when students played an active role [see Figure 1. (a)].)

The active learning biology class of this study consisted of guided reading and online exercises done before class, in-class assignments (often in student teams), and class discussions. The course demographics were 59 percent white, 13.9 percent black, 10.3 percent Latino, 7.4 percent Asian, 1.1 percent Native American, and 8 percent were undeclared, mixed race, or international students. Additionally, 24 percent were first-generation students (see Figure 1. (b)).

Dr. Sarah Eddy, a University of Washington biology postdoctoral fellow and an author of the paper, reports that these active learning methods can be used in large classrooms. She mentions that one large biology course at the University of Washington uses these methods with 700 students, and a separate study shows that scaling up is not costly or overly burdensome. In these courses, students get feedback about their work during class time. In essence, STEM class structure is adopting that of a liberal arts class. The use of an interactive style of teaching "is almost catching up for us in STEM," Eddy admits.

Interaction Closes the Gap

It could be that active learning breaks a cultural barrier. Student surveys showed that in a traditional lecture hall, black students "were very uncomfortable speaking up in class. And, under this reformed course, they were two times more likely to speak up in class," said Eddy. Part of the problem, Eddy argued, is that universities teach based on the culture of the populations they've historically served. "And those populations tended to be white and upper middle class," she said. This teaching style does not translate across cultures, according to Eddy, "since different populations bring different values sets into the classroom," as this study reports.

Admittedly, we still have much work to do toward understanding why this teaching method works. "Interaction is really what is important in this model for closing the gap," said Eddy. She hypothesized that learning methods that are based on "cooperation versus [competition] could be a very important component of the difference."

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Is Lecturing Culturally Biased? | Edutopia

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Lecture halls of hundreds of students are as much a feature of undergraduate education as an achievement gap between different races and socioeconomic backgrounds (PDF, 1.2MB). Interestingly, the new study, authored by two biologists, suggests that the former influences the latter.

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Culturally Responsive Teaching | Edutopia

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We share evidence and practitioner-based learning strategies that empower you to improve K-12 education.

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The changing racial and cultural landscape of America is certainly a much-discussed topic -- some researchers studying U.S. Census data and demographics even say that America could be a "minority majority" country as early as 2050. While the barriers between countries continue to come down, and globalization continues, how can teachers address the needs of students from a variety of cultural backgrounds and upbringings? This collection of videos introduces culturally responsive teaching (CRT), and includes some techniques that you can use to help students from diverse backgrounds succeed together.

Video Playlist: Culturally Responsive Teaching

Watch the first video below, or watch the whole playlist on YouTube.

1. Valerie Purdie-Vaughns on Unintentional Bias (3:04)
In this short video from Big Think, researcher Valerie Purdie-Vaughns explains how bias and assumptions can unconsciously affect the way you act. Although it's geared toward diversity awareness in the workplace, this is a good primer on cultural discrimination.

2. Expanding Teacher Self-Knowledge (1:27)
Since bias is often unconscious, one of the first things a culturally responsive teacher can do is be aware of assumptions about themselves and their students. This quick tip from the Southern Poverty Law Center's Teaching Tolerance initiative explains the value of self-reflection.

3. Office Chat: Culturally Responsive Teaching (9:24)
In this interview, Dr. Kavatas Newell, a faculty member at the University of Mary Washington, introduces some initial ways that teachers can incorporate culturally responsive teaching methods into their classrooms. The audio quality here is a bit low, but the tips are worth it.

4. The Danger of a Single Story (19:16)
Author Chimamanda Adichie's amazing TED talk introduces "The Danger of a Single Story." Teaching students of other cultures may require that you look past familiar stories and narratives to find school materials that resonate with your students' experiences and lives.

5. Building Trust With Families (14:12)
Many students from other cultures are English-language Learners (ELL). Although this video is long at 14 minutes, the panel of teachers and principals organized by Colorin Colorado offers great tips for connecting with the families of ELLs.

6. Recognizing Individual Characteristics (1:10)
This quick video, also from the Teaching Tolerance initiative, reminds viewers to respect students' individuality, even as you learn more about cultural differences and introduce more responsive practices into the classroom.

7. Education: Culture Matters (14:25)
This video from the Kamehameha Schools showcases the importance of culturally responsive educational programs. Students from the native Hawaiian population thrive when they learn in programs that incorporate their cultural heritage and traditions.

More Resources on Culturally Responsive Teaching

Whether you've been teaching diverse learners for years, or you're just starting to think about how to incorporate CRT into your classroom, these organizations and articles can help.

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5-Minute Film Festival: Culturally Responsive Teaching | Edutopia

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The changing racial and cultural landscape of America is certainly a much-discussed topic -- some researchers studying U.S. Census data and demographics even say that America could be a "minority majority" country as early as 2050. While the barriers between countries continue to come down, and globalization continues, how can teachers address the needs of students from a variety of cultural backgrounds and upbringings?

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In reality, cultural responsiveness is more of a process than a strategy. It begins when a teacher recognizes the cultural capital and tools students of color bring to the classroom. She is then able to respond to students' use of these cultural learning tools positively by noticing, naming, and affirming when students use them in the service of learning. The most common cultural tools for processing information utilize the brain's memory systems -- music, repetition, metaphor, recitation, physical manipulation of content, and ritual. The teacher is "responsive" when she is able to mirror these ways of learning in her instruction, using similar strategies to scaffold learning.

For example, a science teacher I mention in the book wasn't having much success with her sixth-grade students learning the science vocabulary. Rather than continue assigning a word list and have kids look words up in the dictionary, we looked at how she could redesign word study using some combination of the cultural tools familiar to her students.

Afterwards, learning weekly vocabulary was more active and game-like. She reported that students were not only re-engaged, but made noticeable progress in using their knowledge of science vocabulary during the lessons.

You'll notice that there's no mention of Africa, Mexico, or race at all. It's a misconception that culturally responsive instruction has to mention race. It's not race that matters in culturally responsive teaching but awareness of implicit bias that gets in the way of healthy student-teacher relationships and narrow interpretations of learning that ignore the cultural tools students bring to class.

Who is the primary audience for your book? Who do you hope will read it?

This is the first year that our public schools have a majority minority student population. That means our classrooms are more racially, linguistically, and culturally diverse than they have ever been, but the majority of our teaching force is still white.

Historically, students of color experience cross-cultural equity issues that contribute to the achievement gap. Closing this gap is where teachers need support. I believe the book will be a resource for instructional coaches as they build their own knowledge and skill around how to help teachers increase their cultural responsiveness.

I hope every teacher gets a copy of the book and reads it with other colleagues. Hopefully it will spark classroom inquiry in identifying what cultural capital students are bringing to school and how to mirror them during instruction.

What are three things that you hope readers will take away from your book?

First I want teachers to get that you don't have to learn 19 different cultures to be effective. Teachers need to simply begin with understanding the cultural dimensions of communalism -- most communities of color have this cultural trait in common, namely a focus on the interdependence of the group. It can be summed up in the African proverb, "I am because we are." This way of being is contrasted with our dominant culture's more individualist, pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps worldview.

The second thing is how important it is to build trusting relationships with students who feel marginalized or misunderstood. The neuroscience is clear on the connection between emotions, trust, and learning. Stress hormones from mistrust block cognition. Students respond to a teacher's focus on care by giving her permission to be tough and push them toward higher achievement.

And last, I hope they take from the book new processes and strategies for operationalizing culturally responsive teaching. I see a lot of school districts using the term, but there isn't much guidance to help teachers build the routines, processes, and structures in their classrooms so that it becomes more than a gimmick.

I'm most intrigued by the title of chapter three, "This Is Your Brain on Culture." Can you give a quick synopsis of that chapter?

This is where the neuroscience is so cool in helping us understand the role of culture in learning. It is like software that programs our "hardware" (the brain). Cultural values and learning practices transmitted from our parents and community guide how the brain wires itself to process information and handle relationships. Neural pathways are over-developed around one's cultural ways of learning.

Culturally responsive teachers know this and piggyback on these well-developed neural pathways with similar types of instruction. Tapping into these neural pathways can help students accelerate their own learning.

I have a huge stack of education-related books that I want to read. Can you convince me why I should read your book?

There are so many good books out there we should be reading that provide new strategies and best practices. But this book isn't a collection of so called "best practices" for African American students or English learners. Instead it provides a framework that helps teachers learn about the resources any group of students brings to class.

The added bonus is that sharing the neuroscience behind culturally responsive moves can help teachers really get it.

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Making Connections: Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain

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In reality, cultural responsiveness is more of a process than a strategy. It begins when a teacher recognizes the cultural capital and tools students of color bring to the classroom. She is then able to respond to students' use of these cultural learning tools positively by noticing, naming, and affirming when students use them in the service of learning.