What does it look like to cultivate relationships with students through the lens of equity and cultural appropriateness? It means recognizing that students are not empty vessels. They have various identities that influence how they perceive the world, how they interact with others, and how others perceive and interact with them. It means recognizing that diverse students learn in many different ways, bring a variety of gifts and skills to the classroom, and have unique pathways to optimized learning. With an empowered and enlightened knowledge of their students, teachers become empathetic classroom facilitators who allow students to engage in various content, processes, and products in the classroom to improve learning. Let’s take a closer look at each of these.
Using various content might look like offering oral and visual supports as well as opportunities for enrichment and remediation.
Using various processes might entail suggesting notetaking, collaborative and buddy work, student-led presentations, and independent practice.
Using various products might mean allowing students multiple ways to demonstrate learning, such as project-based products, multiple-choice assessments, extended writing, presentations, technological activities, and illustrative products.
When teachers design various tasks across content, processes, and products, they honor the diversity of their students and empower them to take ownership of their learning and create culturally appropriate practices.
As teachers, we know who our students are and empower them to interact in ways that honor their identities, cultural backgrounds, and interests. Culturally appropriate educator-student interactions will include a variety of empowering tasks such as telling stories, collaborating, empathizing with multiple perspectives, and empowering students to share their thoughts and experiences as their various identities inform them. The following list suggests six activities teachers can incorporate into the classroom as they seek to build culturally appropriate relationships with students.
Spend time in reflection: Consider your school and classroom demographics of your school.
Create an open-ended interest survey about movies, music, books, technology, and so on: Provide opportunities for students to illustrate their answer. Allow them to share with other classmates—this will afford you the opportunity to notice trends.
Read from authors at diverse intersections: Consider diversity of race, culture, religion, ability, and ethnicity—to name a few—when choosing works.
Engage students in their learning: Ask students, “How do you learn best? What do you want to learn about? How can I help you understand this?”
Incorporate text-based discussions among students: Ask open-ended questions and encourage students to refer back to the text as they answer (Socratic seminar).
Research social media, and use its techniques to facilitate learning: Social media provides information in short increments of time that capitalize on the attention span of its users. Ask how can you put information into short 30 sec or two minute intervals to improve student learning.
It is natural for strong feelings to arise as teachers strive to adopt culturally appropriate practices to better understand their students and provide for their diverse learning needs. Committing to a practice of deep personal reflection can support teachers in examining these feelings, understanding the dynamics that give rise to them, and making conscious choices about how to respond.
Excerpt from Equitable Instruction, Empowered Students by Carissa McCray.
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