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In future practice, I hope to demonstrate and incorporate culturally responsive pedagogy, as well as critical literacy throughout my teaching. Firstly, I hope to be able to teach lessons that not only include diverse perspectives, but also incorporate the cultural backgrounds of those present in the classroom. In order for this to be successful, it is important that I begin with creating a classroom environment centered around equity and inclusion. Ultimately, encouraging student engagement through acceptance.

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When I am eventually a full time teacher, I hope to incorporate an understanding of culturally responsive pedagogy and critical literacy into my classroom. I want to be able to understand my students cultures, and then be able to include aspects of their culture into their learning. I want my classroom to be an affirming environment for all of my students, and I want them to know that they are all unique and valued.

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In my current classroom I have started to incorporate the culturally responsive pedagogy and critical literacy in my teaching. The first step that I took when starting to incorporate these lenses in my classroom was talking to my students and their families. This helped me address each of their cultures and make sure that each of them felt included and represented in our classroom and our lessons. The next step that I took was representing their different cultures throughout our classroom from the space as a whole to our daily lessons. These lenses have helped me work to my main goal of ensuring that my students feel welcome, wanted, and heard in our classroom.

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I could demonstrate an understanding of the theoretical components of culturally reponsive pedagogy and critical literacy by incorporating Funds of Knowledge into my classroom structure as described by Moll et al. (1990). By setting aside time to allow each student's family to share a part of their culture, a large variety of lessons could be designed based off of those experiences. By having families come in and share parts of how they define themselves, I can provide a great opportunity for "mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors" to fill my classroom. The follow-up activities could then allow students to work with the skills. of literacy and, for example, they could explain how they either learned something new about themselves or others during the previous lesson. With this, students would be building a cultural competence.

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In future practice, I hope to demonstrate an understanding of culturally responsive pedagogy by intentionally seeking ways to connect curriculum to students identities, belief's and backgrounds. I plan to incorporate diversity into my everyday lesson planning. This could be through the selection of texts, incorporating students languages into activities or designing opportunities for students to share their own stories.

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In my classroom, I have to make sure I am culturally responsive as the only person that is white in my classroom is me, the teacher. I work in a low income district, so an example of how I use this to practice literacy is making sure all my books are diverse and celebrate all sorts of cultures and holidays. since they are low income, to support reading at home I send home books for the children to take home and read every week.

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In my future classroom, I can implement culturally responsive pedagogy and critical literacy in a number of ways. Firstly, I will take the time to know them, their families, and backgrounds, and have implement bonding practices that ensures they know each other. I can expose my students to a variety of different stories that reflect their unique identities and also teach them about identities and life experiences different from their own, hosting conversations. We can discuss the things that interest them and the questions they have. Further, I can implement critical literacy by choosing complex texts that challenge the reader to learn what it is not saying explicitly, but also prompt questions and thinking that add new meaning to the story.

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In future practice, I hope to successfully showcase my understanding of the theoretical components of culturally responsive pedagogy and critical literacy, in ways that strongly reflect on the lived experiences of my future students. I have always believed that all students deserve to have their identities represented and validated, as every individual brings something unique to the classroom. I would facilitate discussions with students and families as a fundamental stepping stone to a meaningful rapport by encouraging them to share something about their identities and their lived experiences. By taking their identity traits into consideration, I will be able to incorporate them into the classroom’s curriculum and weekly/daily lesson activities, both orally and in writing, such as storytelling, get-to-know-you questions, etc. By formatting those various lesson activities, this gives students opportunities to get to know each other and celebrate each other’s identities in every way, shape, and form.

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One way I could demonstrate an understanding of culturally responsive pedagogy in my ELA practices is by creating a space for students' home languages cultures and experiences to be represented in the classroom. For example I might involve students to bring in stories sayings or texts from their families and communities and then connect those to what we're reading in class. This not only validates their identity but also builds bridges between home literacy practices and academic learning which correlates to ILA standard one which is the emphasis on relationships between language literacy and culture. When thinking about critical literacy I see it as helping students read with a questioning lens that might mean encouraging them to look at whose voices are amplified and whose voices are silenced.

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When I have my own classroom in the future, I would like to demonstrate an understanding of culturally responsive pedagogy and critical literacy by intentionally creating a classroom environment where students’ identities, experiences, and voices are centered in the learning process. This means selecting texts and resources that reflect diverse perspectives, encouraging students to question power structures and representation in what they read, and connecting content to their lived realities. By doing so, I will not only be validating students’ cultural backgrounds but also helping them develop the skills to critically analyze and challenge inequities.

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In my classroom, I strive to be culturally responsive by showcasing all of my students, their identities, beliefs, cultures, and individualism. I do this through a variety of diverse books. I showcase what we are learning through written language with communication device visuals. This allows for my students to see their ways of communication, while exposing the general education population to a new way of literacy. One thing I hope to do in the future is have my students families showcase information about their lives throughout the classroom, photos, experiences in the classroom, books, and more.

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In my current UPK classroom, I am working to incorporate culturally responsive pedagogy and critical literacy. I demonstrate this through seeking the words of my students. After a read aloud I will ask my students their opinions on the story and use deeper questioning to get them to think about why they have those thoughts. Additionally, since my students are early in their literacy development, I use the illustrations to create discussions. Students will put themselves in the image.

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I have just recently began creating a slide show that contains read alouds, songs, and videos specific to different cultures that are celebrated throughout the year. For example, I have a Spanish Heritiage slide that contains a variety of materials to view during Spanish Heritage month (which is taking place right now). I plan to add to this as the year goes on and utilize it as a way to positively represent cultures and people all around the world. This is especially meaningful in my room becuase one of my students identifies with this culutre, so she is able to see her self in our learning as well. I also try to be culturally responsive by support the identities and positive representation of my students. As the only self-contained classroom teacher in my building, for me this means capitalizing on opportunities within my building to celebrate my students. I recently shared photos of my students playing on the playground and leanring in our room with the staff member in charge of creating the slide show for the hallway tvs so that my students can be positibely represented alongside their peers in the building. I also have visuals and posters printed out that frame nonspeaking indivisuals as students who communicate differently, but are no less than any others. I think that my students' identities absolutely include their disabilities and these differences are somethingt to celebrate. Therefore when other staff members are refereing to autism or nonspeaking in a hushed tone like it is something to be ashamed or secretive of, I try to respond with something along the lines of "yes they are _______, and isn't it wonderful to have some diversity and different persepctives present with us!". One of the connections to the ILA Standards is the language piece. For my nonspeaking students I honor their nonverbal communicaiton, such as body language, AAC device useage, PECS symbols and even eye gaze, as evidence of literacy development.

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In my current classroom, I am incorporating culturally responsive pedagogy by ensuring that my students can see themselves reflected in my lessons and incorporating their cultures and interests where possible. I aim to create a classroom where students feel valued for who they are and what they enjoy. I believe I still have room to improve my critical literacy practices, and I can do so by incorporating more diverse books and fostering more open communication throughout my lessons.

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In my practice, I try to bring culturally responsive pedagogy and critical literacy into the classroom by making sure students see their identities and experiences reflected in what we read and discuss. I try to choose texts and materials from a variety of voices so that every student can feel represented and valued. I also encourage students to question whose perspectives are included and whose might be missing, which helps them think critically about power and fairness. These approaches also remind myself to reflect on my own choices as a teacher and create space where all students feel their voices matter.

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One of the most important ways of demonstrating culturally responsive pedagogy in the classroom for me has been de-centering myself from the texts we choose in class, and focusing on texts that are windows, mirrors, and sliding doors. It was a big realization for me that just because a particular text had value for me (either I saw myself in it, or just really loved it), that does not always equate to the same value for my students. It's easy to jump into ELA teaching practices really excited to talk with students about all the books YOU love, but that's not always good teaching.