My Culturally Responsive Teaching

7/28/2019 My Culturally Responsive Teaching

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Kevin GrahamEPS 5127/30/12Final Paper

My Culturally Responsive Teaching

Throughout out the culturally responsive classroom course, I have been

asked to think about the diverse students who I will teach in urban settings. I

was not only asked to think about my future students, however, I was also

asked to reflect on the many different cultures that I will have to interact

with while teaching in an urban setting. As important as it is to think about

my future students and the many different cultures they will come from, this

course placed significance on my own self-reflection. I was asked to reflect

on my experiences with other cultures, my feelings towards people of other

cultures, and my own culture and race.

According to Bonnie Davis in How to Teach Students Who Dont Look Like

You (2006), Culture is the totality of ideas, beliefs, values, activities, and

knowledge of a group or individuals who share historical, geographical,

religious, racial, linguistic, ethnic, or social traditions, and who transmit,

reinforce, and modify those traditions (2008, p.4). My culture will be much

different from the students I will teach in an urban setting. Because my

culture will be different, my ideas, beliefs, values, and knowledge will also

most likely be different from that of my students. With being so different

from my future students, how will I ever be able to relate to my students?

One idea that some white teachers of urban students have is to be

colorblind when it comes to seeing their students. They think that it is better

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to see all of their students in the same way so that they are fair and not

prejudiced. According to Gloria Ladson-Billings, it is better to see students for

who they are and where they are from (2009, p. 33). If a teacher denies

seeing color, they are denying a part of a childs identity because culture

helps form part of our identity. I know that I will notice color when I walk into

an urban classroom. I believe that it is impossible and wrong not to notice

color. When you deny seeing color or deny seeing difference, you deny

seeing a person. Students need to be seen as who they are so that they can

be taught according to their needs. Education has to be tailored to the

students. When I walk into my classroom, I want to see my students, as

diverse as they may be. I believe that working with students from a different

culture will make it even more important for me to get to know each one of

my students and find things that we have in common and can build off of.

I would now like to revisit the question I asked before about how I will

ever be able to relate to my students. Even though my students will be

different from me culturally, there are still ways that I will be able to relate. It

is possible to be friends with people from other cultures so it is possible for

teachers to get to know their students from other cultures. All it takes is to

find one thing in common and then build off of it. For example, in class we

did an activity where we were grouped with other people and had to fill out a

triple Venn diagram. In this diagram, we had to find things that we had in

common and things that we did not. I found that it was not very difficult to

find things in common. Once we found several things in common, we started

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talking about them and found out a lot about each other. Even if I only have

a love of a sports team in common with a student, it is something to build off

of. I must also respect my students cultures and show interest in their

cultures.

I believe that it is also extremely important to have a genuine interest in

my students lives. A successful teacher cares about his or her students

success. I will also care about my students success, and I want to make sure

that my students know that. I will let my students know that I want them to

succeed in life. Students need to feel that their teachers believe in them and

believe that they can succeed and go on to live great lives. When students

think that their teacher does not believe them, they may stop believing in

themselves. Students will want to work hard for a teacher when they can see

the teacher truly cares about them.

Not only do I need to get to know my students as individuals within a

culture, but I also need to get to know and understand my students cultures.

According to Bonnie Davis, Our culture is the lens through which we view

the world (2006, p. 3). My students culture will shape how they view

everyday life, which transfers into the classroom. If I want to better

understand my students, I can start by understanding their cultures. Many

cultures have different beliefs, values, and customs that I am not familiar

with. For example, it is traditional white American culture to practice

independence when learning in schools. This is not the case with my other

cultures, which traditionally learn in an interconnected way in groups with

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their peers. This idea is important to understand when planning lessons and

learning activities. Something as simple as including group work and group

discussions can make all the difference for students who are culturally

diverse. Cultures also place different value on different things. For example,

some cultures place more value on family than other cultures. It is important

to realize what my students value when planning lessons. I have to strive to

become culturally proficient. According to Davis, in order to be culturally

proficient, you have to have the self-awareness to recognize how you

because of your ethnicity, your culture, and your life experiences may

offend or otherwise affect others, as well as what you offer others (2006, p.

4). This does not mean that I have to know everything about each one of my

students cultures; I just have to know how to interact with my students in

the classroom in ways that will benefit them and not offend or teach in ways

that contradict their cultures.

Another area of my teaching where I can become culturally relevant is the

planning of the curriculum. Traditionally, the curriculum in American schools

is based off of and catered to European Americans because they are the

dominant culture in the United States. For example, white males wrote many

of the books, poetry, and other literary works that are read in American

schools. There are very few opportunities for students in American schools to

read works written by members of other cultures. Personally, I was not

familiar with literary works written by members of other cultures until I took

several courses in college, such as African American Literature and Asian

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Literature. I will be teaching in urban schools where most of my students will

be from other cultures. I believe that it will be my responsibility to make sure

that works of literature from other cultures are included in the curriculum.

For example, if I am teaching African American students, I will make sure

that I include literary works written by African American writers. It is

important for students to see that members of their culture or race

contribute to literature and are just as valuable as white writers.

Not only will I have a multicultural curriculum, but I will also make sure to

include elements from different cultures around the classroom. The

classroom is the students workplace. Students need to feel a sense of

belonging about their room. If a students classroom has pictures or

elements of another culture and not his or her own, this student is not going

to feel like he or she belongs. In Preparing for Culturally Responsive

Teaching, Geneva Gay talks about using bulletin boards in classrooms to

display heroes from other cultures or cultural artifacts that can be used to

teach students about their own cultures and other cultures they are

unfamiliar with (2002, P. 108). While I was working for an after-school

program, I used a fifth grade classroom as my groups meeting space. The

teacher had decorated the room with artifacts from each of the cultures of

his students. For example, he had African masks, posters written in Spanish,

and motivational posters depicting famous members of different cultural

groups. The classroom made students feel welcome and also allowed for

students to learn and inquire about other cultures.

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In order to be an effective teacher, I believe that it is extremely important

to reflect on my own experience in terms of race and culture. I am a white

male and was raised in a large, Catholic family in a small town that is about

90% Caucasian. I do not prefer the terms white or Caucasian, but rather

Irish American. I believe that Irish American does a better job of explaining

my culture. Many of the values I was taught were fashioned by being

Catholic or by being passed down from my parents and other members of

my family. It was during my undergraduate career that I first learned about

the term white privilege. According to Peggy McIntosh in White Privilege:

Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack, white privilege is defined as, an invisible

package of unearned assets which I can count on cashing in each day, but

about which I was meant to remain oblivious (1988, p. 1). The rest of the

essay focuses on examples of privileges that white people in the United

States have that others do not. The first time I read this article in my

undergraduate work, I was shocked. I had never heard of white privilege

before, and never really thought about having these privileges just because

of my skin color. I now realize that I do have certain privileges that I did not

earn but do use on a constant basis.

In terms of teaching, I believe that it is incredibly important to reflect on

white privilege. I will be teaching students of other cultures and races who

will not have certain privileges that I have. I need to be conscious about my

status as a white male and what this means in terms of my students. I

cannot assume that any of my students have had the same privileges that I

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had when I was their age. If I was not white, I could be in a very different

place than I am now. I cannot take these privileges for granted, but instead

should work my hardest to recognize these privileges and work to make

these privileges universal. I can begin this by making sure that all of my

students have the same privileges in my classroom. I need to be a fair to my

students and do my best to offer all that I can to make sure that my students

are treated in a way that helps them to succeed in life.

In terms of being a teacher who is fair towards his students, I always

remember some advice that one of my professors offered me during my

teacher preparation courses. My teacher told me that fair does not mean

that all students are treated the same. Fair means giving students what they

need in order to succeed. This means that I cannot treat all of my students

the same. Some students may need something extra from me as their

teacher. However, this does not mean that I will be favoring some students. I

will do my absolute best to make sure that each student gets what he or she

needs in order to succeed in life.

For me, being an urban teacher will be a difficult job. I will be teaching

students who are different than me in terms of culture, race, religion, etc.

Because I will be from a different culture, my students will have different

beliefs, values, and experiences that have shaped who they are and how

they perceive the world around them. However, I believe that I will be able to

perform this job well. I will reflect on my students cultures, how I perceive

other cultures, and my own culture and experiences in order to understand

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how I can best meet the needs of my students. I will incorporate multicultural

materials into the curriculum as much as possible, celebrate students

cultures by displaying artifacts and evidence of their cultures around the

room, and instill in my students a sense of self-worth and need to achieve in

order to help my students be successful in life.

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My Culturally Responsive Teaching