Culturally+Responsive+Teaching

4/3/09 These are notes from the five great PLC meetings that I (Lee) have attended. The focus started as being on culturally responsive teaching, but as you can see, our conversations went in many related directions and the topic of culturally responsive teaching intersects with many other topics….

The CLAS video can be accessed through this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3AbBFzIokg

• How do we begin to further educate ourselves about various cultures/groups? • How do we go from where we are to a level of respect for/interest in/reverence towards groups of which one is not a member? • How do we not strip the child(ren) of who they are? • How do we translate everyday language that we have in place (ie: “on track”) to everyday practices that we all are using – and have breadth and depth in what we are trying to do? • How do we improve? How do we focus, slow down, think about and begin to incorporate culturally responsive practices? • What is our vision? Do we share one? If we do, do we know it? If we don’t, how do we move towards one? • Where do we start in making a conscious effort towards moving towards being more responsive to our populations? • (regarding the ideas of African American Language and Mainstream English Language Development presented in the CLAS video) How do we acknowledge/support outside of school language, but also prepare students for the expectations of some of the working world and for a world that may judge them based on how they speak? • In the video, students had a dress code; it seemed to speak to parent commitment to the school goals; how do we grow in our shared commitment – school/home – to the school expectations? • How do we develop a school culture that reflects all of us? Does our school culture need to be changed? If so, how do we accomplish this?

Ideas of steps we can take • Improve our knowledge of other cultures (some questions about how?) – and start the year by making it an integral part of our preschool week – and beyond! • Expand our resources to reach our Hispanic and Asian populations – book lists, photo collection images that all can access • Address the lack of respect between students through a common culturally responsive/character education/? Plan/approach – something that uses common language, and has common – and high – expectations for how we children treat one another and have an intolerance for disrespecting others through language and behavior • In EDGE, offer some assignment and choice to students – not all assigned classes so that kids can feel invested, supported, and not like they need to be ‘fixed’ all of the time • Have quarterly ‘cultural celebrations’ (something like what 4th grade has done at recent PRIDE party?) to increase everyone’s knowledge of others and increase understanding • Work with/build on the work with African American Language and Mainstream English Language Development – how do we honor what children bring to school and still teach them what will be expected of them in different areas – ‘code switching’