Culturally Responsive Teaching: Next Steps

1. Culturally Responsive Teaching:Next Steps Presented by: Dr. Ignacio IV Lopez Chicago, IL Staff Development For Educators 2010

2. Agenda

3. Objective TWBAT: • Further define culturally responsive teaching • Identify at least five culturally responsive teaching methods that matter. • Identify various teaching strategies that can be applied the five CRT methods that matter. • Identify that many of us ARE ALREADY culturally responsive teachers, we just didn’t know how to articulate it…

4. What can you expect here today? Audience members can expect to: • Listen to some teaching stories • Share some teaching stories • Participate in “Elbow-Partner” small discussions • Volunteer for some interactive demonstrations • Laugh! • Leave here motivated, inspired, informed…but with more questions!

5. Meeting Protocols • Be courteous and attentive to others speaking. • If you have to leave please do so quietly. • Mute Cell Phones (and pagers if you still have one) • To bring us all back together I’ll raise my arm, then you’ll raise your arm, this is the signal to stop conversation and resume attention up front.

6. Comfortable dialogue (Icebreaker) • In small groups decide: • What will it take for you to feel safe and comfortable when having conversations about race, ethnicity, and culture? • Make a list of 5-10 rules and be prepared to share. • I will choose 5 volunteers to share-out

7. Audience Participation – Our Rules of Engagement are… • Listen with an open mind • No name calling • Open to constructive criticism • Open conversation • Check your vocabulary • Respect the speaker • Willing to se3e multiple points of view

8. Who’s this Lopez guy? My Answers: Black My Categories: • Favorite Color? • Where was I born? • How old am I? • Do I have kids? • What degree is my undergrad in? • Favorite Baseball team? • Favorite Cartoon? San Juan, PR 31 Yes, 3 English White Sox Tom and Jerry

9. What’s up with this Assumptions Activity? • How many of us have taken the time to “purposely” disclose information about ourselves to our students? • A) What if we do? B) What if we don’t? And, C) how much? Are often the three questions that I hear from teachers.

10. PART A:What is Culturally Responsive Teaching? CRT is what we do, but more importantly it’s how we think. “The first problem teachers confront (when thinking about CRT) is believing that successful teaching for poor students of color is primarily about what to do…instead the problem is rooted in how we think.” (Gloria-Ladson Billings)

11. For me… • CRT has always been an inside-out process. I couldn’t have been a successful teacher without looking inside myself first.

12. What are the CRT Methods That Matter? For this first part we’re going to “unpack” five CRT methods that matter. You need to keep in mind, there are TWO sides of the coin for each method. 1) Thinking about how it affects me and my pedagogy 2) Thinking about how it affects my students

13. Essential Questions to keep in mind as we move through this: • What is Cultural Responsiveness in my classroom? • How will these methods affect my lesson, my lesson plans, the learning environment, etc…? • What are the benefits for my students if they learn and know these methods too?

14. The Five Cultural Responsive Teaching/Learning Methods that Matter • Self- Awareness: unpacking my life-world versus my students’ life-world. • Developing a Cultural Lens and adapting our teaching philosophies • Create the Space (brave conversations, the learning environment, the curriculum) • Cultural Knowledge (having it, or learning where to go get it) • Sustaining the Space: Strategies to keep culturally responsiveness alive in your school and classroom.

15. PART B: CRT Strategies The Five Cultural Responsive Teaching Methods that Matter and Strategies • Self- Awareness: • Strategy: “Meeting my other” • Strategy: “Am I what you see?” • Developing a Cultural Lens • Strategy: “What do you see through here?” • Create the Space (brave conversations, the learning environment, the curriculum) • Strategy: Long-Term Scaffolding CRT in your classroom (Rules of Engagement) • Strategy: Ask the right question • Cultural Knowledge (Assumptions vs. Realities) • Strategy: “What’s enduring mean to you?” • Strategy: “It’s not always hip-hop” • Sustaining the Space: • Strategy: Avoid the Destination Disease

16. 1. Self- Awareness Audience Participation: On an index card respond to the following two statements: A) In one minute think and write about a time when you were the MINORITY (1 minute) B) In one minute think and write about a time when you were the MAJORITY (1 minute)

17. Lopez shares… • Minority: Most memorable was in my high school reading class. • Majority: Most memorable was playing baseball in Humboldt Park in Chicago. Our walk away so far should be…how do we think our students would react to this type of question? How does this type of question make us feel?

18. 1. Self-Awareness • Self- Awareness Strategy Box: • Assumptions Activity: The first day of school have students “assume” things about you and each other. You create the list. • Me and Minority/Majority: After the proper “space-has-been created” ask students to describe various situations of their community, life, and experiences on being the minority and majority. • Community Walk: Walk yourself around your schools community, talk to the local 7-11 guy. Talk to neighbors. You’ll learn things about yourself and your community. • Me in a box/bag: For younger students you can ask them to put things in a box or bag that displays who they are. • Self- awareness asks us to think about, and to get our students to think about, who we are, how we think others view us, and our life-world experiences that have brought me to think and “be” this way. Discuss Share

19. 2. Developing a Cultural Lens • CRT teachers must be able to deconstruct, construct, and reconstruct the curriculum. However, you can’t do any of these unless you’re consciously thinking about it or you have purpose to do so. • Developing a Cultural Lens Strategy Box • Listen to the group of teachers you hang out with everyday, how do they talk about students? • Listen to your friends when you go out tonight talk about other people • Listen to yourself make references to other people • Deliberately ask someone tonight, “Why did you say that about him?” • Deliberately think about how the curriculum is “speaking” to our students • Pretend there’s a Lens that you’re looking through (CRT Lens) when you write curriculum (Kite example). Discuss Share

20. 3.Create the Space • Have you ever had a student swear at you in September? Have you ever had that same student swear at you again in April? • If you have, you may not have successfully long-term scaffoldedthe physical and emotional learning environment.

21. Define: CREATE-THE-SPACE With purpose teachers should scaffold, set-up, and or define what the physical and emotional learning environment will sound like, look like, and feel like throughout the academic year. “Create” = scaffold, set-up, define “The space” = the classroom learning environment As teachers if we don’t create-the-space for learning to occur, your students will create the space to push back on what ever you give them…in other words they’ll create it for you. (This thinking comes from the Pedagogy of Poverty by Haberman)

22. 3. Create-The-Space(Long-term physical and emotional scaffolding strategies) • Create-The-Space Strategies • Rules of Engagement Strategy • The Lopez Learning Insurance • You Are Experts Strategy • The MAPP Rating Strategy • The “Where are your pants?” Strategy

23. Strategy: “Lopez Learning Insurance” Motivation and Investment Strategy for 6-12 Sign hung up on my classroom wall created by students.

24. Strategy: “The Motion Picture Rating”Creating Consciousness of Language Strategy 6-12 grade

25. Strategy: “Where are your pants?”Creating Consciousness of Attire 6-12 grade Where Are Your Pants? Lopez Decent

26. 3. Create-The-SpaceAt the individual Student level - Strategy Audience Participation – Role Playing Activity: I need 6 volunteers • One person will be the teacher • Four students in the classroom • One student who comes in late to class Scene: Teacher has begun the lesson. One student walks in 9 minutes late to class again for the second day in a row.

27. Audience Participation Our job, audience, is to see how the teacher A) Reacts to the student being late B) Approaches the student who is late C) What the teacher asks the student. We will: • Watch the scene • Take notes on the scene • Write down how we would have handled the situation • Then we will share with our neighbor similarities and differences.

28. Scene 5 minutes

29. What did you notice? • What did the teacher do? • What else would you have done? When thinking about Creating-The-Space at the “individual student level” there are at least seven things that we might want to think of…

30. The No Punishment Intervention Process… Look at the seven items…did you talk about having them, or doing them? • 1. I effectively build relationships with students • Doing this allows us to “ask the right questions” • 2. I attempt to understand my students’ life-world • 3. I have students create their own intervention • 4. I have students sign contracts/make a commitment • Sign, write, handshake, even a hug • 5. Call home • 6. Invite parent/guardian to talk with the teacher • 7. Follow school policy procedure (detention etc…)

31. 3. Create-The-Space Quick Recap: • Asks us to “go there” when discussion of culture, identity, and race emerge in our classrooms • Asks us to talk about race, culture, and identity in our classrooms • Asks us to expect that conversations about race, culture, and community will happen in our classrooms…we have to be ready when they happen.

32. 4. Cultural Knowledge (Assumptions vs. Realities) • Cultural knowledge is exactly that, what knowledge of our students’ cultures do we really have? Not assumptions of cultures or stereotypes but realties. • Cultural knowledge doesn’t mean we abandon preparing students for the traditional societal demands (i.e. high school completion, postsecondary education, workplace requirement, active citizenship) • Refers to helping students to recognize and honor their own cultural beliefs and practices while acquiring access to the wider culture.

33. Cultural Knowledge Strategy Box: • What’s enduring to you strategy. Ask students to bring to class what music they think will be around for the next 100 years. Have them explain why. Then bring in music that has lasted decades (Sinatra, etc…) • The etiquette unit. Teach students etiquette, but also teach them this history of why there’s etiquette. Then take them to experience fine dining where they have to perform the learned etiquette • What do you know about your own culture? (unit) • Strike the balance…it shouldn’t always be hip-hop 4. Cultural Knowledge

34. 5. Sustain-The-Space • I’ve heard teachers say, “Oh, I learned that in teacher college I don’t need to do that again…” • Learning to teaching isn’t a moment in your life, it’s your life. Avoid the Destination Disease! • Sustain-The-Space: Questions that can lead us to strategies… • If you’ve been successful getting your students to think about their culture and other cultures, get them to pass it on! • If we’ve walked into the CRT epiphany how can we get other teachers to do the same? • Should our students know these five CRT methods that matter? • Lead a PD on CRT for your school. • Lead your team in an analysis of the curriculum for cultural relevance.

35. Success in the Midst of Burnout: What Successful Teachers Do… • They have a Growth Plan (Personal and Professional) • They are Deceptively Standard (Obsessed, but sly, about teaching appropriate skills) • Consciously, and even unconsciously, practice The Power of Approach (reaction, approach, and questioning) • They Educate Beyond school walls • They are culturally responsive in their lives, and practice culturally responsively

36. You Rock! Thank you ! The End

37. References Gay, G. (2000). Culturally responsive teaching: Theory, research, and practice. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Steinberg, S. & Kincheloe, S. (2004). 19 Urban Questions: Teaching in the City. New York, NY: Peter Lang. Ayers, W (2008). City kids city school: More reports from the front row. New York, NY: The New Press Singleton, G.E. & Linton, C. (2006). Courageous conversations about race. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press Cornbleth, C. (2008). Diversity and the new teacher: Learning from experience in urban schools. New York, NY. Teachers College Press.

38. References • Johnson, D.W., & Johnson, R.T. (1995). Teaching students to be peacemakers. Edina, MN: Interaction Book Company. • Fay, F. & Funk, D. (1995). Teaching with love and logic. The Love and Logic Press, Inc. • Ericsson, A., Prietula, M.J., & Cokely, E.T. (2007). The Making of An Expert . Harvard Business Review , July -August 2007, . Retrieved from http://141.14.165.6/users/cokely/Ericsson_Preitula_%26_Cokely_2007_HBR.pdf • Lopez, I. (2010) Why Are the Latino Students Late for Class? Lambert Academic Press. Retrieved from http://www.lopezlearning.net/files/Why_Are_The_Latino_Student_Late_For_Class_v7_2010.pdf

39. Links • Here’s a link to the National-Louis University library libguide with research and information on Urban Education: http://libguides.nl.edu/cat.php?cid=24374 • Here’s a link to Dr. Ignacio Lopez’ Homepage: www.lopezlearning.net • Here’s a link where you can download the PDF version of the book Why Are the Latino Students Late for Class? by Dr. Lopez: http://www.lopezlearning.net/FreeBook.html • Here’s the link where you can find this presentation and other teacher resources including more about the strategies I presented today: http://www.lopezlearning.net/TeacherResources.html

40. CRT Methods That Matter Parts, Methods, and Phases Part 1- Discovering your “Other” How do I begin this: • With me? • With my students? • Self- awareness: Unpacking my life-world so I can become better in-tuned with my students’ life-world Phases you might run into: 1. Confusion 2. Anger 3. Annoyance 2. Developing and using a cultural lens in our existence and pedagogy Phases you might run into: 1. Fear 2. Panic 3. You think you got…but you don’t 4. epiphanies Strategies? How do I begin this: • With me? • With my students? Strategies?

41. CRT Methods That Matter Parts, Methods, and Phases Part 2 – Discovering the CRT “Methods” How do I d0 this: • With me? • With my students? Strategies? 3. Create the space: Brave conversations, the physical and emotional learning environment, the curriculum Phases you might run into: 1. Research anxiety 2. Fear of change 3. Shock 4. Cultural Knowledge on learning modalities Understanding that persons from different cultures really do learn differently/student culture Phases you might run into: 1. More Research anxiety 2. Opposition from other non-crt teachers 5. Sustaining the space: Classroom methods to keep culturally responsiveness alive Phases you might run into: 1. Epiphanies you want to share 2. Burn-out How do I d0 this: • With me? • With my students? Strategies? How do I d0 this: • With me? • With my students? Strategies?