Diversity is an important topic culturally and academically in today’s society. Now, more than ever, it is essential and respectful to have a classroom environment that is culturally responsive. As teachers, we must be proactive in our cultural responsiveness and continue our own professional growth to leave the greatest impact on our students.
A culturally responsive classroom begins with the teacher. The teacher must perform a self audit to dig deep inside herself to discover the things that she does not look at or talk about (Rucker, 2019). It is time to stop ignoring student differences and start to embrace them. “Culturally responsive teaching (CRT) attempts to bridge the gap between teacher and student by helping the teacher understand the cultural nuances that may cause a relationship to break down-which ultimately causes student achievement to break down as well (Rucker, 2019). When lessons are made relevant to our students, they become engaged learners. This builds their confidence, widens their viewpoints, and affirms their value (ISTE, 2019). Relationships matter in the classroom, and the teacher must identify who her students are in order to lay the foundation of a welcoming classroom for everyone.
One of the best ways to build a culturally responsive classroom is through the classroom atmosphere and library. A culturally responsive teacher should examine the feel of her classroom. Do students have a voice about where they sit or how they best learn? How do they interact with each other? What books are they reading, and do they have a choice in them? When students see themselves represented in the literature, it is affirming for them (Ball State Immersive Learning, 2019). Multicultural literature is no longer defined as books about people of color or including vocabulary words of another language sprinkled within the text. This literature must be expanded to represent a variety of races, religions, cultures, genders, and socioeconomic status (Young et al., 2020). Education, primarily literature, can be the great human equalizer. It can take students from a limited scope of the world and broaden their cultural knowledge and give them a frame of reference for social interactions, future academic lessons, job interviews, and more (ISTE, 2019).
In the digital age we live in, the teacher has an array of resources at her fingertips to grow her own professional and cultural knowledge. Educational technology is an available, convenient, and universal form of communication and research. Part of a culturally responsive classroom is to form relationships with the whole family of the students. Students succeed at a greater rate when there is a partnership between the home and school. Technological communication platforms are an ideal way to communicate with those parents and families who may not feel comfortable calling or coming to the school (ISTE, 2019).
Professional development is a key component to retaining highly qualified educators, as well as enhancing an individual’s cultural responsiveness. Collaboration is an important characteristic of professional learning. As teachers, if we are going to encourage student collaboration in our classroom, we need to embrace it for teacher learning too (Shearer et al., 2019). This promotes diverse perspectives, and what better way to grow in our cultural awareness than to have diverse conversations with colleagues of different backgrounds and experiences? Shearer et al. also suggest professional development should be differentiated. The teacher should be learning in the areas where she feels she needs the most growth and support. In a culturally responsive classroom, it is truly about knowing who your students are, so professional development should be centered around YOUR students (2019). In addition to making professional development relevant, informative, and transformative, there needs to be follow up from these sessions. A teacher will be more likely to reflect on and implement ideas presented in professional development settings, if the topic(s) addressed resurface again and are not dismissed upon completion of the training. The fact that professional learning is considered part of a school’s plan for improving sustaining effective instruction rings ever true for that of literacy and cultural awareness.
In conclusion, today’s educators must take a look in the mirror to determine their cultural responsiveness in the classroom. By incorporating a classroom library of diverse, equally representative literature and participating in relevant professional development, collaboration can be promoted and individualism honored in the classroom (ISTE, 2019).
References
Ball State Immersive Learning.(2019, January 9). Reading the wor(l)d critical literacy and
culturally responsive classroom libraries [Video]. Youtube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1g-dx-meVA
ISTE. (2019, October 9). Creating a culturally responsive classroom [Video]. Youtube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VixB5WBiLqE
Rucker, N. W. (2019, December 10). Getting started with culturally responsive teaching.
Edutopia. Retrieved February 9, 2022, from https://www.edutopia.org/article/getting-
started-culturally-responsive-teaching
Shearer, B.A., Carr, D. B. A., & Vogt, M. E. (2019). Reading specialists and literacy coaches
in the real world (4th ed.). Waveland Press, Inc.
Young, T.A., Bryan, G., Jacobs, J.S., & Tunnel, M.O. (2020). Children’s literature, briefly
(7th ed.). Pearson Education, Inc.
