How can we reach all of our students鈥攅specially those who have been underserved in America鈥檚 classrooms? The authors of suggest that culturally relevant pedagogy can make a difference. Although it certainly includes inviting in the voices of those who are generally overlooked in the texts and curricula of US schools, culturally relevant teaching also means recognizing and celebrating those students who show up to our classrooms daily, welcoming their voices, demanding their reflection, and encouraging them toward self-discovery.
Following Gloria Ladson-Billings (1995, 2001), :
- hold high academic expectations,
- demonstrate cultural competence, the understanding聽that their own worldview and understandings聽may or may not align with those of聽their students, and
- are sociopolitically aware, that is, they have a聽willingness to acknowledge and critique inequity.
The following resources from and offer resources on culturally relevant pedagogy.
Culturally relevant teaching is a term created by Gloria Ladson-Billings. What does it mean to develop a culturally relevant pedagogy? How might we think about community in our teaching? In in , Gloria Ladson-Billings explores the implications of these and other questions for language arts teachers.
In the very popular article ““, Yvonne Freeman and David Freeman argue the importance of providing students with culturally relevant books and discuss their criteria for deciding if a book is culturally relevant to a particular child. The lesson plan cites this article.
“” from details research on culturally relevant practices in an eighth-grade language arts classroom, including the selection and utilization of culturally relevant texts, scaffolding with popular culture, the incorporation of new literacies, and instructional focus on students making personal connections with classroom content. Work with a teen to create a wiki with everything people should know about the teen’s top ten favorite songs with from .
In from , there is a description of “Choosing Culturally Relevant Primary Materials as ‘Entry Points’ to Characterization”. The examples given are using primary sources during a unit on patriotism. Use to dig deeper into using primary sources in the classroom.
聽published a themed issue on ““. This issue offers a sampling of how English educators are applying Culturally Relevant Pedagogy to a broad spectrum of work and research including articles on “Common Core to Cultural Literacy: Incorporating History and Technology in Unit Frameworks” and “Children鈥檚 Literature as Medium for Teacher Self-Reflection”.
“Literature often has been considered a quick and easy way to bring multicultural perspectives into the ELA classroom. Yet for effectual change, significant shifts in pedagogy prove more powerful than surface additions.”
This quote comes from an聽 from 聽in which the authors focus on how a college of education鈥檚 multicultural mission statement intersects with one teacher鈥檚 life story. The lesson plan invites students to explore the effects of stereotypes by analyzing children鈥檚 books. Then they create bookmarks that encourage readers to question the assumptions of stereotyped books and to seek out matching, balanced texts.
This post presents a curated set of resources from 楼凤天堂鈥檚 archives. If you are a member of 楼凤天堂, you have full access to all these articles and need only login to the website to view them. If you鈥檙e not a member, !听