Today’s post continues a yearlong series reflecting on how to avoid common mistakes made in the name of culturally responsive teaching.

‘Academic Success’ Is Foundational

Mary Rice-Boothe, Ed.D., joined The Leadership Academy in 2015 with more than 20 years of experience in education as a teacher, principal, principal coach, and curriculum designer and currently serves as its executive director of curriculum development and equity. She is the author of Leading Within Systems of Inequity in Education: A Liberation Guide for Leaders of Color and can be found on social media @mriceboothe or by reading her newsletter:

When Gloria Ladson-Billings coined the term “culturally responsive teaching,” she introduced it alongside three fundamental tenets that form the backbone of this educational approach.

They are: Tenet One, academic success; Tenet Two, cultural competence; and Tenet Three, critical consciousness. Each tenet is integral to the holistic development of students, ensuring they are not only academically successful but also culturally aware and critically engaged with the world around them.

Tenet One: Academic Success

The first tenet, academic success, is foundational. Ladson-Billings emphasized that culturally responsive teaching is not about lowering academic standards to make students feel comfortable; rather, it’s about ensuring that all students, regardless of their cultural backgrounds, achieve high levels of academic success.

This tenet challenges educators to maintain rigorous academic expectations and to use instructional materials that are both high quality and standards-aligned. Academic success in culturally responsive teaching is not an option; it is a necessity. Teachers must ensure that their instructional strategies are effective and that they prepare students for college and career readiness. This preparation includes leveraging materials that challenge students intellectually and help them develop the skills needed to succeed in a globalized world.

Tenet Two: Cultural Competence

The second tenet, cultural competence, is often the most recognized aspect of culturally responsive teaching. This tenet involves understanding, respecting, and affirming the diverse cultural backgrounds of students. It’s about creating a classroom environment where students’ cultural identities are seen as assets rather than obstacles to learning.

However, the challenge arises when educators focus solely on this tenet, potentially at the expense of academic rigor. While it is essential to build authentic rapport and trust with students, staff, families, and the community, it’s equally important not to let this focus detract from academic expectations.

When teachers overly prioritize cultural competence without equally emphasizing academic success, several risks emerge. These include the lowering of academic expectations, which can lead to a decline in student achievement. There is also the risk of using instructional materials that are not aligned with standards or are of lower quality. While culturally relevant materials are vital, they must also challenge students and push them toward higher-order thinking.

Another risk is the lack of balance between creating a classroom environment that reflects students’ cultures and exposing them to new and different environments and cultures. Education should broaden students’ horizons, offering them windows into worlds beyond their own while affirming the value of their cultural heritage.

Tenet Three: Critical Consciousness

Critical consciousness, the third tenet, involves teaching students to recognize and challenge the social inequities that exist in society. It’s about empowering students to be critical thinkers who understand the broader social, political, and economic forces that shape their lives. This tenet encourages students to question the status quo and to be agents of change in their communities. For teachers, this means integrating social-justice issues into the curriculum and encouraging students to think critically about the world around them.

It is essential that teachers do not shy away from these challenging conversations, as they are crucial for the development of well-rounded, socially conscious individuals.

The Interconnectedness of the Tenets

Ladson-Billings placed academic success as the first tenet for a reason. There is no separation between academic success and cultural competence; they are inextricably linked. One cannot thrive without the other. High academic expectations coupled with cultural competence and critical consciousness create an educational environment where students are not only successful but also culturally and socially aware.

To effectively keep all three tenets at the forefront of their teaching practice, educators can utilize resources such as The Leadership Academy’s culturally responsive classroom guide. This tool provides questions and sample indicators that teachers can use to self-assess their pedagogy and ensure alignment with the tenets.

Practical Strategies for Teachers

In addition to using self-assessment tools such as The Leadership Academy’s Portrait of a Classroom: A Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Walkthrough Guide, teachers can engage in student interviews to ensure they are meeting the needs of their students across all three tenets. These interviews provide valuable insights into how students perceive their learning environment and whether it supports their academic and cultural development.

Furthermore, in our current educational climate, there has been a call to return to the basics, particularly in reading. This is understandable, as foundational skills are critical. If a student like Johnny cannot read, it is a problem that should concern all of us. However, Johnny will be able to read quicker and with greater comprehension if the materials in front of him reflect his cultural background and expose him to new and diverse cultures. His learning environment must be conducive to his success, and his teacher must believe in his potential and set high expectations for his achievement.

Conclusion

In conclusion, culturally responsive teaching is a comprehensive approach that requires balancing academic rigor with cultural competence and critical consciousness. When educators successfully integrate all three tenets, they create a learning environment where students like Johnny not only succeed academically but also grow into culturally aware and socially responsible individuals.

This holistic approach is essential for preparing students to thrive in a diverse and rapidly changing world. By maintaining high academic expectations, affirming students’ cultural identities, and fostering critical consciousness, educators can ensure that all students can achieve their full potential.

‘Hip-Hop Education’

Vera Naputi is a descendant of indigenous Chamorros from Guam, raised in California, and now resides in Madison, Wis. She is currently in a dual role at Madison East High School teaching AVID classes and serving as an instructional coach:

Culturally responsive teaching and hip-hop education are intertwined. At the core of hip-hop education, is a pedagogical focus on reality, on where we came from, on what is happening in real time, and how we bring the truths of lived experiences into the room. Hip-hop is more than a popular music genre, and there is undoubtedly a wide range of thoughts and feelings about the “appropriateness” of hip-hop, which is frankly a whole other article.

All things considered, hip-hop is a culture that has significant contributions and presence in art, activism, politics, community, and academics. It not only values identity and storytelling, but it amplifies the crucial need for teaching and learning that centers justice, love, and healing—the anchors that especially support Black and brown students, their families, and their community’s freedom.

It calls on us to cultivate empowerment in our classrooms where students learn about the world so they collectively and creatively resolve to change it. And it gives us tools to imagine a world without racism and anti-blackness. In fact, when hip-hop does its best work, it reflects realities. It tells the truth.

And truth, in my opinion, is the real work of culturally responsive teaching. I’ve had several life-giving experiences when certain people have come into my life at a time when I was at a crossroad.

Over a decade ago, Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz was that person. I was in a workshop she was leading at a hip-hop education conference, when she entered the room and asked the participants to “write for full presence,” an activity that has since become a core part of my life both in and out of the classroom. The prompt was, “Where I’m from ….,” a seemingly common, low-risk provocation, yet a surprisingly powerful probe and one in which I have since written dozens of narratives, poems, and lyrics that tell different aspects of my ongoing story.

This activity is grounded in Sealey-Ruiz’ “archeology of self,” the process of self-exploration that is more than a one-time journal entry. Through reflection, writing, speaking, and listening, it is a pathway for self-examination, interrogating the self, and actively challenging issues of oppression and racism that live within each of us. The archeology of self and the pedagogy of hip-hop education encourage educators to use their lens and their mirrors to excavate and dig up beliefs and biases that have influenced their teaching practices.

A few years ago, I participated in a different hip-hop education conference for music educators. The late Jarritt Sheel asked us to close our eyes as we reflected on the question, “Where does your story start?” I was struck by the surfacing of joy and pain, triggers and new understandings that we as a collective shared in that space.

I was struck by the intensity of being in relationship with my personal expression and the unearthing of things I did not realize I was carrying. I wondered how my inner life is expressed in the classroom. I was struck by the truth behind Sheel’s words: “Teaching is forever the act of unpacking your own stuff.”

Those words are inextricably linked to Palmer Parker who says, “we teach who we are,” which is to say that personal-identity work can and will deepen our understanding of ourselves, our students, our content, and community.

I purposely highlighted two writing and reflection ideas that are meant to be ongoing practices as individuals and in community. Challenging ourselves as educators to engage in these reflective writing activities may in turn have a profound and positive effect on curricular content and pedagogical strategies. As we work toward being culturally responsive teachers, I want to again emphasize what hip-hop education offers and strengthens: a focus on truth that emerges from our inner journey and ultimately connects us to ourselves and the young people in front of us.

‘Cultural Humility’

Melanie Battles, Ph.D., founding consultant of Scholars for the Soul: An Educational Solutions Firm, has over a decade of experience working in education as a K-12 literacy educator, college adjunct faculty member, instructional coach, and educational consultant:

So many teachers are jumping on board with wanting to be culturally responsive, but very few actually understand the totality of what it means to BE culturally responsive.

Culturally responsive teaching is best defined, in my opinion, by the following formula: cognition + culture. Cognition refers to our human capacity to think and process information through our senses. Culture can be simply defined as our ways of being that relate to how we make meaning of the world around us. The two components, cognition and culture, cannot be separated and are actually the foundation for how our brain learns and merges old with new knowledge.

The goal of culturally responsive teaching is to equip the teacher with ways to respond to how the brain processes information and takes that same information into deeper depths and higher heights. And while this focus on cognitive neuroscience sounds fascinating, it is not often the focus of educational conversation, instructional design, nor implementation of instructional equity.

Most commonly, teachers are focusing on culturally relevant materials that include people, places, and things that are representative of the various cultures, and while that is important and necessary, it is not what will move the needle. The focus MUST BE on closing the instructional equity gaps.

If we are not focusing on how to support teachers in their capacity to provide equity throughout their instructional planning and delivering, culturally responsive teaching will continue to be perceived as an add-on and not the foundation for solid and effective teaching for all students.

There is an assumption that all teachers are equipped with the knowledge base and experience to teach effectively, meaning that students are actually benefiting both socially-emotionally and intellectually from said teaching. This assumption diverts school leaders’ attention away from building strong systems of support that emphasize building a foundation of teaching in a way that responds to how the brain processes information. Rather, the focus is on one-and-done professional development sessions that rely heavily on strategies and not the overall picture of instructional equity and excellence.

Teachers are mistakenly misled to believe that strategies are the pathway to being culturally responsive, but it takes a very intentional and strategic journey of being to embody cultural responsiveness in a way that automates your thinking toward belonging, inclusivity, and differentiation so that the diverse needs of students are met.

Another common mistake that teachers make regarding culturally responsive teaching is not embracing the journey of becoming through cultural humility and rather focusing on a fixed identity that is not flexible for the nuances that are a part of instructional equity building.

Cultural humility calls educators “in” to actually see themselves as lifelong learners who are always students of their students; they are open to learning and valuing the cultural funds of knowledge that young people bring into learning spaces and using that information as leverage to learn.

Culturally responsive educators authentically embody a growth mindset that is central to learning the value in identifying their errors as opportunities for growth and not a threat to their identity as a teacher. Once teachers shift into this becoming state of mind within their identity as a “human who teaches,” they view mistakes and learning as a vital part of the growth cycle and are on the journey to becoming culturally responsive.

All of the work that is layered and nuanced and a part of the identity of a culturally responsive educator takes time, intentionality, dedication, and community. Every educator who desires to meet the cultural, linguistic, and neurologic needs of their students must embrace this work as a journey that calls them into their authenticity, their purpose, and their radical dreams for engaging and impacting students in a positive and healthy way.

Thanks to Mary, Vera, and Melanie for contributing their thoughts!

Today’s post answered this question:

What do you think are the most common things teachers get wrong about culturally responsive teaching?

Part One in this series featured Zaretta Hammond.

In Part Two, Françoise Thenoux, Jehan Hakim, and Courtney Rose contributed their responses.

In Part Three, Crystal M. Watson, Tiffani Maher, Kristi Mirich-Glenwright, and Keisha Rembert shared their comments.

In Part Four, Gholdy Muhammad, Shondel Nero, and Denita Harris provided their commentaries.

Part Five featured responses from Andrea Castellano and Erica Buchanan-Rivera.

Consider contributing a question to be answered in a future post. You can send one to me at lferlazzo@epe.org. When you send it in, let me know if I can use your real name if it’s selected or if you’d prefer remaining anonymous and have a pseudonym in mind.

You can also contact me on Twitter at @Larryferlazzo.

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