How to Adopt a Culturally Responsive Mindset (Opinion)

Abraham Smith

(This is the last post in a three-part series. You can see the first part here and part two here.)

The new question of the week is:

What are your suggestions for making social studies classes culturally appealing?

In Part One, Denise Facey, Sarah Cooper, Dennisha Murf, and Keisha Rembert kicked things off.

Denise, Sarah, Dennisha and Keisha were also guests at my 10 minute BAM! radio show. You can also find a list and links to previous shows here.

In the second part, Don Vu, Kiera Beddes, and Stephanie Smith Budhai, Ph.D., contributed their reflections.

Today Stephen Katzenl and Ching-Ching Lin, Ed. D. Conclusion of this series.

“Not a Single Lesson”

Stephen Katzenel is the author behind it Win Your First Year of Apprenticeship in Middle School: Strategies and Tools for Success. He is an educator with a passion for middle school education, helping new teachers:

For decades, there have been differing opinions on how to teach social studies without national uniformity, meaning a kid in Boston might get an entirely different perspective than a kid in Boise, Idaho. Social studies has dominated the headlines pedagogically and politically because of parents’ perceptions of the right way to teach and implement the curriculum in the classroom.

To drown out the political banter and farcical politicians, social studies teachers need to adopt a specific approach to culturally-responsive teaching. This is not a lesson, picture or reading, but a way of thinking. It doesn’t matter whether you’re teaching world history, US history, or some other social sciences class, your belief that each class will be culturally appealing is critical to engagement and success.

Adopting a culture responsive mindset will pay dividends for your students and content. Each day, social studies teachers can post “Today in History” on the board, which lists historically significant events or achievements about an individual or group of people. Teachers can access dozens of pre-designed, culturally relevant lists online that resonate with different groups of students. The “Today in History” would ideally refer to the content you are covering in class, but if not, no problem! By highlighting achievements from different cultures and groups of people, students feel supported, seen and valued. In addition, teachers can use the “Today in History” as a hook to begin their lesson with the historical content covered in that day’s lesson.

Knowledge of the primary and secondary sources used is critical to increasing cultural responsiveness in social studies classes. Many social science curricula completely exclude the perspectives of marginalized historical figures and groups. Spending class time analyzing different perspectives and historical figures increases cultural responsiveness and adds depth to each social studies lesson by adding additional voices to the historical content covered in class. The next time you prepare a lesson that involves primary sources, I challenge you to add an additional source that will highlight and amplify the voice of an individual or group that is not traditionally included in the curriculum you teach.

Teaching social studies comes with a lot of responsibility and trust. Working together to incorporate diverse sources and viewpoints into your daily routine and teaching will enrich not only your classroom, but the lives of the students you teach. Remember that being a culturally appealing teacher is not a single lesson, it’s a mindset!

beaculturallykatzel

‘Beyond SIOP’

Ching-Ching Lin, Ed.D. is a former social studies and ESL teacher and is currently a teacher educator in TESOL and bilingual education in New York City. She is co-editor and co-author of the following anthologies: Internationalization in Action: Leveraging Diversity and Inclusion in Globalized Classrooms and Inclusion, Diversity, and Intercultural Dialogue in the Philosophical Inquiry of Young People:

ESL teachers tend to see our role in social studies or other content area classrooms as providing language support, building fluency, vocabulary and comprehension skills in content areas. We help learners develop the skills necessary for academic success and broaden their access to the general curriculum.

In essence, the teaching practices mentioned above imply that students cannot meaningfully interact with the text until they understand the textual characteristics of what they are reading or hearing. Such views not only treat reading and writing as context-independent skills, but also reflect an oversimplified, linear view of language acquisition that often results in missed opportunities to engage in the complex literacy practices and agency skills of multilingual learners .

In contrast, an ability-based lens would view students positively, evaluate what they bring to the table as strengths, and embrace those strengths. What if, instead of approaching students based on our perception of their weaknesses, we consciously position ourselves as fellow learners, seeking, connecting, examining, being deeply curious, focusing on students’ strengths, and empowering them as creators of knowledge?

Here are some suggestions for incorporating asset-based approaches into a fifth-tier SIOP (Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol) Lesson for English learners on the Dust Bowl to move our goals beyond providing language support in the social studies classroom.

SIOP

Beyond SIOP

1. preparation

The content and language objectives of this lesson are that students will be able to answer questions to demonstrate understanding of the most important details in the text by asking oral and written questions about who, what, when, where, how and answer why.

Rather than adopting a text-driven approach, the lesson aims to incorporate students’ racial, cultural, and linguistic identities in inquiry-based learning and provide personalized, meaningful learning experiences.

As a grand finale, students can contribute to a classroom e-newspaper by interviewing a community member about an issue their local community thinks is important.

2. Build background knowledge

The teacher will review what happened in the 1930’s and what life must have been like for many Americans.

Build students’ background knowledge by drawing on students’ life experiences. For example, students discuss how they would feel if they were stuck in unheated homes during a power outage.

3. Understandable input

Students are guided to preview a text and read more accessible texts to gain an overview of the topic.

Students are given a partner to read the Dust Bowl.

Create multimodal and multilingual texts on the topic to provide students with multiple ways to understand and communicate complex ideas.

A puzzle reading, in which students are asked to read and discuss the text from different perspectives, can serve to encourage diversity while creating a shared understanding:

  • The government
  • A landowner
  • An African tenant
  • A Mexican immigrant
  • An industrial worker

4. strategies

Throughout the lesson, the teacher encourages students to make predictions about the event that happened in the 1930’s.

Throughout the lesson the teacher will model how to make connections between the ideas in readings, our everyday experiences and beliefs and events in the world.

5. interactions

During this lesson, students will be in a small group and have many opportunities to talk to each other.

Students are offered opportunities to expand their linguistic and communicative repertoire by interacting with others with tasks such as:

  • Analyze the text
  • Retell the story
  • interview
  • Discuss or debate

6. practice/application

Students have ample opportunity to discuss content knowledge with their peers and use written language to answer questions posed by the teacher.

Offer students the opportunity to use their full language repertoire in real-world assignments designed to connect students with their community, such as: For example, interviewing a family or community member about a headline that appears in a local newspaper.

7. teaching

Good reading strategies are reinforced throughout the process as students continue to support their skills of synthesis, summarization and determination of the main idea.

Throughout instruction, teachers position themselves as fellow learners in the classroom to engage students’ cultural beliefs and communicative repertoire through meaningful conversations and assignments aimed at building school-community connections in the classroom.

8th. review/evaluation

The teacher will invite volunteers to answer the who, what, when, where, why and how questions related to the text.

Rather than using an assessment that only allows for a variety of prescribed responses, consider building a school-community partnership by having students contribute an interview paper to an electronic class newspaper and demonstrate their understanding in a multimodal, creative way.

By connecting students to their local community, teachers can use their understanding, curiosity, and empathy to drive inquiry-based learning in social studies classes that aims to affirm students’ cultural and linguistic identities.

teacher canching

Thanks to Stephen and Ching-Ching for their contributions!

Consider contributing a question for a future post to answer. You can send me one to [email protected]. If you submit it, let me know if I can use your real name if it’s chosen, or if you prefer to remain anonymous and have a pseudonym in mind.

You can also contact me on Twitter at @Larryferlazzo.

Education Week has published a collection of posts from this blog along with new material in the form of an e-book. It’s titled Classroom Management Q&As: Expert strategies for the classroom.

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