Culturally Relevant Pedagogy

I grew up in a small, suburban town outside Baltimore, MD. My neighborhood was white and upper-middle class. I went to school with the same kids all the way from kindergarten to 12th grade. On the other hand, the school that I teach at is very diverse. I have students from all different backgrounds. My school is districted in a middle class neighborhood and has several ESOL and magnet students from all over the region. It is important for me to keep in mind that their backgrounds and experiences may be very different from mine. To me, culturally relevant teaching is being able to effectively teach students from all walks of life.

Gloria Ladson-Billings has been monumental in culturally relevant pedagogy. Ladson-Billings was the first black woman to become a tenured professor at the University of Wisconsin - Madison (Knutson, 2019). However, she never thought in her wildest dreams that she could achieve the career she has now. Other black students ended up working right after high school, so she never thought that she would go to a four-year college (Knutson, 2019). I agree that there is a stigma against certain students continuing their educations after high school. I have one black student who constantly insists that he is not going to college, and probably will not even finish high school. He is a very bright student, but he does not apply himself. When I ask him why he does not participate in class, he tells me that it does not matter. I think that his background and home-life are part of the issue. He knows that he is expected to get a minimum wage job as soon as he turns 16. The money that he makes will go directly to helping support his family. He has accepted this fate and cannot imagine ever going on to get a higher education and a better job.

Although I teach a wide array of students, the majority of my school's student population is black. There is definitely a stigma against black students going to college. This stigma is perpetuated by parents who did not go to college. Unfortunately, it is hard for students to plan for and do well in college when they are the first generation of college students in their family.

In mathematics, culturally relevant pedagogy "takes students' cultural or community funds of knowledge into account during mathematics instruction" (Gallivan, 2017). One suggestion from the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) is to "draw explicitly on students' use of mathematics in their cultures and/or home and community lives through high-level mathematics tasks" (Gallivan, 2017). I believe that I could easily incorporate some open-ended, group tasks that encourage students to make connections between mathematics and their own cultures and communities. One really great idea that I may implement next year is to give students a long-term project during our exponential functions unit. Students research their dream job to figure out what their projected yearly income would be. After that, they choose a car and a house and calculate their monthly payments based on their income. I think this would be a great project to give students some freedom to express their own interests and experiences.

References

Gallivan, H. R. (2017, March). “Supporting Prospective Middle School Teachers’ Learning to Revise a High-Level Mathematics Task to be Culturally Relevant.” National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. Vol. 5, Issue 2. Retrieved from https://www.nctm.org/Publications/Mathematics-Teacher-Educator/2017/Vol5/Issue2/Supporting-Prospective-Middle-School-Teachers_-Learning-to-Revise-a-High-Level-Mathematics-Task-to-Be-Culturally-Relevant/#CulturallyRelevantMathematicsPedagogy.

Knutson, K. (2019, April 16). “Gloria Ladson-Billings: Daring to dream in public.” University of Wisconsin – Madison. Retrieved from https://news.wisc.edu/gloria-ladson-billings-daring-to-dream-in-public/.

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Affective Assessments

I appreciate that early on in my teaching career, I was introduced to Carol Dweck's idea of growth mindset. Growing up, I know that I had a fixed mindset about what I was and was not good at. I would say things like "I'm not a chemistry person" or "I'm not an art person." Dweck's book really changed my mind about what a student can and cannot do. In Dweck's opinion, students, teachers, and parents need to change their thinking from "I can't do it" to "I can't do it right now." When I was in high school, I loved art. In my sophomore year, I decided to take a photography class. At first, I was really interested in it, but once we moved to actual, old-school cameras, I had no idea what I was doing. My film was always over-exposed and I eventually gave up because photography was not something that I was naturally good at. However, I believe that if I took the time to properly study photography, I could take better photographs. Photography is a skill that I could easily master.

However, my time in the classroom this year has made me more of a realist. I like the growth mindset theory, but that's exactly what it is, a theory. While I know that students are capable of learning much more than they think they are, there is still a limit to what they can learn. This is where I take cues from Lev Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development. There are certain things that students can already do without help, and there are things that students can do with help. However, there are some things that students just cannot do, and they should not be expected to do.

I use affective assessments from time to time in my classroom to get student feedback. At the beginning of the programming unit in Computer Science Principles, I gave students an affective assessment to gauge their programming skills and opinions about pair programming. I administered this assessment periodically throughout the programming unit to check in with students and adjust my instruction as necessary. During this uncertain time of digital learning, I plan to check in with my students using similar assessments as often as possible.

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Cultural, Socio-economic, and Linguistic Diversity

I am lucky to teach at one of the most diverse schools in my district. My school is only one of a handful of secondary ESOL (English to Speakers of Other Languages) schools. This means that we have several students in general education classes who do not speak English fluently. I do not teach any ESOL-specific classes, but I still teach some ESOL students.

In the beginning of the year, I worked with administration and other teachers at my school to identify which of my students were in the ESOL program. Once I identified these students, I did some research into their native language and English test scores and provided each of them with subject-specific glossaries. Most of my ESOL students in algebra 2 and geometry have scored high enough on their tests that they do not need a glossary. However, I still make them available to all of my ESOL students to help even the playing field. I have also tried to seat ESOL students next to each other so that they can work together and help each other out.

I teach several students who come from low socio-economic backgrounds. A large percentage of students at my school are on Free and Reduced Meals (FARM). I make sure to keep students' possible living situations in mind while I am teaching.

During this time of digital learning, I am worried about my students, especially those from low socio-economic backgrounds. I am worried that they are not getting enough to eat. I am worried that they are completely isolating themselves and having a tough time coping with this change. I am worried that some of them do not have access to some of the things I take advantage of, like the internet. Digital learning is far from an ideal situation, and unfortunately, it creates a lot of equity issues among students. A lot of families do not have reliable internet that their students can use to do their schoolwork and keep in touch with their teachers and classmates.

Right now, I do not have much, if any, flexibility on how and what I teach. However, I think this opportunity has been a great experience in letting students work at their own pace. Many of my students plan on continuing their education after high school, so I think this has been a good way to prepare them for the type of self-regulated learning that will be required of them in college.

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