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Learning for Justice Magazine (learningforjustic.org) presents a series of videos, reflection questions and support resources that can be used as professional development or individually to better understand the importance of providing culturally responsive classrooms for learners. This series concentrates on stereotypes, relevant curriculum, and bridging language gaps.

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Educators today hear a lot about gaps in education - achievement gaps, funding gaps, school-readiness gaps. Still, there's another gap that often goes unexamined: the cultural gap between students and teachers.

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Educators today hear a lot about gaps in education - achievement gaps, funding gaps, school-readiness gaps. Still, there's another gap that often goes unexamined: the cultural gap between students and teachers.

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A free downloadable eBook linked through TPT that how creating culturally responsive classrooms can address the issues that students are dealing with in a world full of violence and terror. Written by teachers working with middle to upper grade students this eBook provides suggestions, ideas, and responses to the world today and how to think about making our classrooms safe and caring for students.

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Creating Culturally Responsive and Caring Classrooms: A New EBook — Mud and Ink Teaching

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Our world is broken, hurting, and desperate for healing.  So where does that leave us, the secondary educator?  How can we, or should we, attempt to address the pain that is so palpable in our world with our students?

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Understood.org article with guidelines that can be easily navigated to help develop and understand creating a culturally responsive environment in classrooms.

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Culturally responsive teaching is a research-based approach that leverages students' assets - their cultures, languages, and life experiences - to create rigorous, student-centered instruction.

To put culturally responsive teaching into practice, follow the ideas below. And remember, it's OK to start small as you figure out what works for you and your students.

Identify students' assets.

Reflect on your students' strengths and whether you've considered them as strengths before. Ask yourself:

Finding out your students' interests is a great way to build relationships. Their interests can also help guide your instruction. You can collect this information through:

Questionnaires, surveys, and conversations with students and families

Conversations with other colleagues who know the students

Paying attention to the topics or activities that students find most engaging

All students bring funds of knowledge to the classroom. That includes their own background knowledge, experiences, and skills needed to navigate their day.

Take a look at this example of a funds of knowledge matrix to brainstorm similar examples from your students.

Learn about highlights from students' cultures, like historical figures, accomplishments, and awards.

Find out about local contributions in your students' communities. (Your students and families may have examples to share.)

Avoid asking too many direct questions about families' personal lives. Some families, especially immigrant families, may have concerns about sharing personal information with the school. As trust develops, they may be more willing to share.

Culture and cultural values

You don't need to become an expert on all cultural groups and languages. But you do need to understand your students' cultural identities to build a positive classroom culture and create relevant learning opportunities. Learn about your students' cultures, whether that's a country on the other side of the globe or a neighborhood down the street.

It's also important to think about how your own culture impacts your teaching practices. This reflection can help you develop a mindset that strengthens relationships with all students, including those whose backgrounds are different from yours.

All students bring language assets and skills to the classroom. They may also have different styles of interaction and communication.

Be mindful of the different communication styles, patterns, and norms your students may use.

Bring a diverse range of poetry, music, or other forms of expression into the classroom on a regular basis.

Learn about the language skills students bring to the classroom. For example, English language learners (ELLs) have bilingual skills that are often overlooked when they are evaluated only for their mastery of English.

Some African American students regularly switch between dialects, known as code-switching. This skill requires high levels of linguistic, social, cultural, and cognitive ability, but it often goes unnoticed. Talk about how this skill can help students navigate contexts in and out of school. Support them in using language that's appropriate to each context.

Create a supportive classroom environment.

Develop authentic, caring relationships. Relationships establish trust and respect - crucial ingredients for learning.

Create a welcoming classroom. Think about whether your classroom sends a message that students are welcome and that great things are possible for their learning.

Look for ways to increase and support rigor. Raising expectations is an important part of increasing academic achievement.

Look at your curriculum. Ask where you can raise your expectations for students.

Identify the skills students need to complete higher-level work in your classroom. Use explicit instruction and strategy instruction to help students learn, practice, and apply new skills.

Keep in mind that for some students, this may be the first time they're challenged to master these skills. Create a culture that understands that mistakes are part of the learning process.

Continue your own learning.

Explore resources to deepen your own understanding. Culturally responsive teaching is a chance to reflect on your personal perspective. You can also use a culturally responsive lens to learn about the broader forces that shape the lives of students.

Look for trustworthy, research-based examples of culturally responsive teaching across the curriculum that reflect the diverse student populations you serve. Start with this comprehensive list of resources from Colorín Colorado.

Consider finding a partner or mentor for shared discussion. You can also look for an online community of educators focused on this topic, like @equityinst.

See culturally responsive teaching in action.

Watch this video clip from Edutopia. Think about these questions as you watch:

Culturally responsive teaching is a shift in mindset that will not happen overnight. It requires a willingness to learn, be vulnerable, be flexible with instruction, and reflect. The path to culturally responsive teaching is a journey, but with practice and patience, it will benefit you and all of your students.

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How to Use Culturally Responsive Teaching in the Classroom | Understood

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Culturally responsive teaching is a research-based approach that leverages students' assets - their cultures, languages, and life experiences - to create rigorous, student-centered instruction. To put culturally responsive teaching into practice, follow the ideas below. And remember, it's OK to start small as you figure out what works for you and your students.

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Further reading about the idea of engagement with diverse student populations with Culturally Responsive Teaching and The Brain by Zaretta L. Hammond. (linked here through Amazon but available via Libby or local libraries).
Description from Amazon.com: "In this book, Zaretta Hammond draws on cutting-edge neuroscience research to offer an innovative approach for designing and implementing brain-compatible culturally responsive instruction."

The book includes:

Information on how one’s culture programs the brain to process data and affects learning relationships

Ten "key moves" to build students’ learner operating systems and prepare them to become independent learners

Prompts for action and valuable self reflection

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Culturally Responsive Teaching and The Brain: Promoting Authentic Engagement and Rigor Among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students

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Culturally Responsive Teaching and The Brain: Promoting Authentic Engagement and Rigor Among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students [Hammond, Zaretta L.] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Culturally Responsive Teaching and The Brain: Promoting Authentic Engagement and Rigo…

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Zaretta Hammond author of Culturally Responsive Teacher and the Brain guest writes for the Cult of Pedagogy blog with tips on integrating cultural responsiveness into lessons in our classrooms. Provides three ways of using student-centered learning tools to create to mimic student culture as a whole. Her examples show a seamless and natural integration of learning tools that engage and provide relatable learning opportunities.

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Last month, I reviewed Zaretta Hammond's fantastic book, Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain. Now I'm proud to have Zaretta here as a guest writer to share some specific strategies with us.

Culturally responsive teaching. Everybody is talking about it. The big question is: How do you actually make lessons culturally responsive? That comes up regularly when I am working with groups of teachers to improve outcomes for diverse students who are struggling. I remember working with a group of sixth grade teachers on improving learning for their at-risk students. These teachers were frustrated that their students, 95 percent of them students of color and English language learners, were not applying themselves to learning.

I suggested that we explore making lessons more culturally relevant in order to accelerate student learning. I remember the reaction of Janice, the science teacher. "I am not going to be rappin' about the periodic table," she said defiantly as she crossed her arms and sat back in her chair.

I couldn't blame her. Google "culturally responsive teaching" and you can find a dozen videos of well-meaning teachers leading some call-and-response chant about exponents or rapping about the Boston Tea Party while students sit back and giggle. That's because we usually talk about culturally responsive teaching only as an engagement strategy designed to motivate at-risk students to take learning seriously. Or we try to find a race-based connection to the content to make it "relevant" to minority students.

One of the biggest misconceptions about culturally responsive teaching is thinking you have to tie the lesson's content to African American or Latino students' racial background. The common belief is if you mention Africa, Mexico, or famous black and brown high achievers, it will spark students' attention. Then they will be motivated to participate.

In reality, culturally responsive teaching is less about using racial pride as a motivator and more about mimicking students' cultural learning styles and tools. These are the strategies their moms, dads, grandmas, and other community folks use to teach them life skills and basic concepts long before they come to school and during out-of-school time.

Culturally responsive teaching leverages the brain's memory systems and information processing structures. Why? Many diverse students come from oral cultural traditions. This means their primary ways of knowledge transfer and meaning-making are oral and active. It's a common cultural tradition that cuts across racial groups: African American, Latino, Southeast Asian, and Pacific Islander communities all have strong oral cultures. Each of these cultural groups uses the brain's memory systems for turning inert information into useable knowledge. They use memory strategies to make learning sticky, like connecting what needs to be remembered to a rhythm or music (that's why we still know the ABC song) or by reciting it in fun ways like a poem, riddle, or limerick.

I asked Janice what area of learning she wanted to help her kids improve. She said science vocabulary; they weren't learning the weekly words and it was getting in the way of their understanding of key concepts. She was frustrated and at the end of her rope. I asked how she was teaching it. She used the typical approach: On Monday, she listed the words on the board. Students copied them down and were required to look each word up and use it in a sentence. On Wednesday, there was a vocabulary test.

I suggested that we design word study to be more culturally responsive by making it more like the students' own cultural learning process. She was open for trying something different.

I offered her these three tips for transforming any lesson into something that looked and felt more culturally responsive to diverse students, something that would allow them to engage more and process the content effectively.

Games are the power strategy for culturally-grounded learning because they get the brain's attention and require active processing. Attention is the first step in learning. We cannot learn, remember, or understand what we don't first pay attention to. Call and response is just a way to get the brain's attention. Most games employ a lot of the cultural tools you'd find in oral traditions - repetition, solving a puzzle, making connections between things that don't seem to be related (Ever play Taboo or Apples to Apples?).

Organizing learning so that students rely on each other will build on diverse students' communal orientation. This communal orientation can be summed up in the African proverb, "I am because we are." Even making learning slightly competitive in a good-natured way increases students' level of attention and engagement. It's why the T.V. show Survivor has been around for so many years; it's a social-based game.

The brain is wired to remember stories and to use the story structure to make sense of the world. That's why every culture has creation stories. In oral traditions, stories play a bigger role in teaching lessons about manners, morality, or simply what plants to eat or not eat in the wilderness because it's the way content is remembered. Diverse students (and all students, really) learn content more effectively if they can create a coherent narrative about the topic or process presented. That's the brain's way of weaving it all together. (Bonus: It also offers a great way to check for understanding and correct misconceptions.)

So Janice took her weekly list of science vocabulary and created a variety of sorting and matching games for students. She built a set of simple card games based on Go Fish or Old Maid. In addition she created some team games. Each week students had different active ways to learn the vocabulary. For 10-15 minutes a couple of times during the week, students got to play these learning games rather than look up words in a dictionary. She gave them instructions for making the games at home if they wanted to.

Instead of the traditional weekly vocab test, she asked them to "storify" their understanding of key concept words like metamorphosis, using vocabulary from past weeks.

When I checked in with the group a few weeks later, she was the first one to share. She said student engagement was like night and day. Now all students were participating. She said she knew they were learning the vocabulary at a deeper level because they were actually using the new science terms during discussions and in their writing with no prompting from her.

The big A-ha's for the group that day were that (1) Culturally responsive teaching doesn't have to be some performance the teacher does to entertain students and (2) It doesn't have to mention race or reference culture at all. Instead, what makes a practice culturally responsive is that it mimics students' own cultural learning tools. They all realized that these practices are helpful for all students, not targeted at minority students.

The real trick is to use these strategies regularly as part of your instructional routine rather than doing them randomly every now and then. Consistency is the key. ♦

Learn more about how to improve diverse students' information processing skills and actually grow their brains in Zaretta Hammond's book, Culturally Responsive Teaching and The Brain: Promoting Authentic Engagement and Rigor Among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students .

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3 Tips to Make Any Lesson More Culturally Responsive

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Google "culturally responsive teaching" and you can find a dozen videos of well-meaning teachers leading some call-and-response chant about exponents or rapping about the Boston Tea Party while students sit back and giggle.

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GoGuardian blog posts delving into the culturally responsiveness being more than incorporating diversity in classrooms. This blog gives examples of ways to establish more culturally responsive techniques into lessons and activities in the classroom.

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Teaching Tips for Creating a Culturally Responsive Classroom | GoGuardian

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Classrooms have always been diverse. Understanding how cultural differences affect learning is now catching on. Read about culturally responsive classrooms here

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Casey Brown discusses 7 culturally responsive classroom management strategies that can be implemented in the classroom to help create an environment and culture where all students feel welcome. This blog highlights using cultural awareness in classroom management.

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7 culturally responsive classroom management strategies - Classcraft Blog

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By implementing strategies leaning towards building a culturally responsive classroom, teachers can create a classroom where all students feel respected.

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12 Ways to Make Culturally Responsive Instruction Work in Your Classroom (bamradionetwork.com): Podcast discussing the meaning and providing strategies for making classroom culturally responsive.

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This checklist from ASHA (American Speech-Language-Hearing-Association) can be used to help self-reflect and assess our own cultural awareness and thought process in how we plan and engage in our classrooms. One of the beginning steps of creating a culturally responsive classroom is having an understanding of our own biases and where we come from culturally.

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Edutopia video (2:02 minutes) explaining the importance of cultural identity in learning and classrooms. Provides an overview of how knowing who students are and what they can bring to classroom can expand the learning experience.

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Education Buzzwords Defined: What Is Culturally Responsive Teaching?

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Understood.org resource that can be used to get to know students and understand interests that can help guide instruction and classroom management.

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Edutopia .com video that highlights the importance of "windows and doors" to the world going beyond books and building diversity into all aspects of learning and resources. Building alliances across differences so that students can live in the world of today.

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Learning About Difference and Belonging Through Books

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As part of the Teaching Today Podcast's curriculum series, this episode discusses culturally responsive classroom and the integration of culture into curriculum rather than as an add to it.

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Culturally Responsive Curriculum by Teaching Today

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Research increasingly shows that the academic performance of students of color often suffers due to differences between curriculum and culture. Culturally responsive and sustaining curriculum is a critical element in reversing this trend.

How do we integrate culturally relevant material into traditional curriculum? How can we provide students with a curriculum that recognizes and celebrates their identities, lived experiences, and cultures?

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Special guest:
Dr. Marcelle Mentor | Teachers College, Columbia University

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A video link that takes you inside the classroom of Genevieve Erker who demonstrates culturally responsive teaching and learning. This video provides a great example of structured movement, learning, and engagement during a lesson that gives students a voice and connects them to content.

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