North Kitsap School DistrictCulturally Responsive Instruction:

Accessing Students’ Needs to Improve the Learning Experience

August 26, 2014

Presented byMelia LaCour, Puget Sound ESD

JD Sweet and Elizabeth Blandin, New Phase New Ways

Objectives for Today (Purpose)

• Connect CRT to teacher evaluation and Marzano framework.

• Connect CRT to state expectations for inclusive and equitable schools.

• Process Cultural Competence definitions and terminology.

• Begin discussion of culture and its impact on teaching.• Discuss using Opening Days and Community building

activities to develop and enhance relationships with staff, students, and families.

• Discuss ways to use CRT to build and bridge to a personally accepting and academically challenging classroom environment.

The Agreements

Singleton, Glenn. Courageous Conversations of Race: A Field Guide for Achieving Equity in Schools, 2005.

Stay Engaged Don’t Let your heart and mind check out!

Experience Discomfort Agree to experience discomfort so that we can

deal with issues of race in an honest way.

Speak your truth Be honest about your thoughts, feelings and opinions. Say them in a way that is true for you.

Expect and accept non-closure Accept that you will not reach closure in your understandings about race and race relations. There is no such thing as a “quick fix.”

Intent vs. Impact Check for intent when impact seems to communicate bias.

What’s the difference in a word?• Multicultural education of the past focused on the

concepts of:– tolerance– acceptance– Inclusion

• Consider these messages:– I’m going to tolerate your differences.– I’m going to accept you, even though you’re different.– I will include you by putting a poster of an (insert

ethnicity here) person on my wall or once in awhile read a book that has one of “you” in it.

What good was multicultural education?

• A reaction to overt acts of hate and discrimination.• Geared to the majority Caucasian population to

learn about others, but created “the other” as an entity not characterized as “normal.”

• Resulted in a “shame and blame” reaction by majority Caucasian population. “Why is it my fault those people aren’t…?”

• Did not directly aim to lower the achievement gap.

• validates and affirms the students’ home cultures and languages in order to meet them where they are.

• engages students by using techniques that are culturally familiar to them.

• requires that educators honor the families as a way of partnering with them to educate children.

• aims intentionally to lower the achievement gap.

How is Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Teaching

different? It:

What’s the difference in a word?

Multicultural Education

Culturally and Linguistically

Responsive Teaching

Tolerate Validate

Accept Affirm

Include Engage

The importance of acknowledging the “home” cultures and identities of the students we instruct, in order to make our teaching more effective, culturally relevant, and less alienating, has long been recognized by scholars and practitioners in the field (see, e.g., Valenzuela, 1999; Vavrus, 2002).

These educators maintain that students’ lives, the curriculum, content, and educational achievement, are often knitted together, and if the cultures and experiences of children and their communities are not named in the curriculum, then schools are not meeting their educational needs.

Wayne W. Au, “High Stakes Testing and Discursive Control: The Triple Bind for Non-Standard Student Identities, Multicultural Perspectives, II:2, 2009.

Connection to Marzano

Our work today:– Requires us to connect culturally responsive teaching

practices to the Marzano Framework

– Asks us to expand our awareness and knowledge about the “home” cultures and identities of our students to effectively implement the framework

– Encourages us to understand how culturally responsive instruction is embedded in all aspects of the framework.

Jump In, Jump Out

Stand up if…

“If a child can’t learn the way we teach, maybe we should teach the way they learn.”

Ignacio Estrada

• Relationships• Emotional and Social Well-being• Collaboration• Evidence-Based Decision Making• Shared Vision

Best Practices means…

From Best Practices From High-Performing Middle Schools, Kristen C. Wilcox and Janet I. Angelis, 2009

PERSONAL INVENTORY

Personal Inventory# 24

Think of your ‘world’…….

where you shop, music you listen to, people you interact with on a personal level, what you eat, tv shows you watch, magazines and newspapers you read, movies you rent, clubs you belong to, special events you choose to attend such as the theatre, etc.

……What does it look like?

Alignment with the Marzano Framework

Turn and Talk:

How does expanded awareness of our personal biases and assumptions assist us in effectively implementing the framework in a culturally responsive manner?

Consider Criterion 7 as a place to begin your reflection.

THE BIAS TREE

Visible characteristics

Invisible characteristics

Character Analysis

What makes characters individuals?

The Bias Tree: What makes you you?

Instructions• Draw a tree• Label the roots: They are your foundational values,

heritages, environmental influences (inside home and location of home).

• The Trunk: Describe how you see yourself.• Label the limbs and leaves: they are your outward

appearance, the manifestations of your roots. How do other people see you (actions, appearance, speech, attitudes, values)?

• Draw the forest or your world. Are other trees like you, or are they other species?

Bias

Tre

e: W

hat m

akes

you

you

?

Roots/Foundation:

Trunk/body: How you describe

yourself

Appearance

Actions Speech

Attitudes

Upbringing Heritage

Values taught at home

Leaves/what people see:

© New Phase New Ways 2010

• First Impressions – note preconceived ideas for each person (leave space to write more)

• Gallery Walk – take notes on what confirms, contradicts, or adds to your original notes

• Group discussion on assumptions and hidden realities

• Bias Trees – bias in creation…how were decisions made about what to include or exclude?

Bias Tree Gallery Walk

Alignment with Marzano

Turn and Talk:

• Review the Marzano Framework At-a-Glance

• How do you see this lesson connecting to the framework?

OPENING DAYS ACTIVITIES and BUILDING COMMUNITY IN THE CLASSROOM

Classroom Inventory

1. What would students say makes your classroom inviting?

2. What might students say makes your classroom intimidating?

3. How do you make decisions about your classroom appearance?

4. Do you have a classroom library for students to access freely? If so, what selections are available?

Building Relationships With Students Considering Diversity of Cultures

AffirmValidateEngageBuild

Bridge

In order to do this, you must know your students’ funds of knowledge (backgrounds and prior knowledge), even the prior knowledge that has no seeming connection to your curriculum.

How can this be done?

Opening Days Activities will result in…

AND…– Greater unity, togetherness in purpose– Greater sensitivity towards each other– Greater respect towards each other– Healthier environment to do “the work”

1. Teacher learns about students personally.2. Students learn about each other.3. Students learn about themselves.4. Students learn about teacher.5. Teacher can assess reading, writing, listening,

speaking, and leadership skills.

Jump In Jump Out

Choose questions based on what you want to know about the class or what you want the class to know about each other.

Individual Experience Family Culture

HOW DOES THIS ALIGN WITH THE FRAMEWORK?

Turn and Talk• How will the information learned from

students in this activity assist you in implementing the framework in a culturally responsive manner?

• Circle all the criterion with which this activity aligns.

Where Do You Call Home?• Materials needed:

– maps of the world and of the United States.– Small post-it notes.

• Students write their own names on a post-it note.• Ask students to think about the place in the world that they

consider to be “home.” It could be where they were born, where they last resided, where they reside now, where grandparents live, etc.)

• Students select one detail they can tell about the place they call home that would be interesting to a person who has never been there (weather, parks, restaurants, environment, people, culture, etc.)

• One at a time, students place their post-it note on the place they call home and share with the class why it is their home and something interesting about it.

Opening Days Activities – Not just for the first day of school!

• Jump in – Jump Out• Where do you call home?• Values Questions: Superheroes; Million

dollars; Favorite food• Gift box• Subject Trivia Game• Similarities and Differences• Teacher Interview• Your Ideas?

A variety of activities can incorporate reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills.

Alignment with Marzano Framework

Turn and Talk:

• Criterion 5 states: Fostering and managing a safe, positive learning environment.

• How might this activity support you in creating a safe, positive learning environment for all students?

STUDENT FEEDBACK

Soliciting Student Feedback

• Anonymous surveys• Classroom discussions• Anecdotal evidence• Guided questions• Personal conversations

Responding to Student Feedback

• Be a professional.• Resist the urge to take it personally!• Weigh your options.• Discuss your successes and failures with

students.• Don’t be afraid to take their advice.

Alignment with Marzano Framework

Turn and Talk:

How does this activity align with the framework?

What kinds of information might you want to gather from students to assist you in your culturally responsive lesson planning? Creating safe and inclusive classrooms?