Cultural Competence

In our wide and chilly central meeting room, I find book bags wildly scattered about the room. A mess of teenagers have forgone the neat circle of chairs to convene in the middle of the room.

The mission seems simple; they want to mimic the dance steps Kendra has designed. I hear the simultaneous snap she has integrated into her steps and the bursts of laughter that follow their inability to all achieve the perfect synchronized timing.

Last summer, my students were fascinated with union suits, the one-piece undergarment. We were getting ready to visit the Minnesota History Center, where a display featured a Minnesota-based company that got its start as a producer of union suits. We previewed the museum’s collection online. The students were quite taken with the red wool outfit with the “trapdoor” over the rear end.

I am a good driver. You’d never know it, given the theatrics of the backseat drivers in my vehicle, whose sudden gasps and quick grasps for the dashboard denote a lack of confidence in my skills.

This drama is alternately amusing, annoying and unnecessary. I'm proud to say that, for the most part, my instinctive go-to practice of "when in doubt, step on the gas" has never let me down.

I’m a Teaching Tolerance Fellow, and I’m working to develop classroom resources that balance the requirements of the Common Core State Standards with culturally responsive instruction. I’m hoping to draw upon our readers’ expertise to meet this challenge. What readings or texts do you recommend that answer the call of the Common Core and culturally responsive pedagogy?

“To err is human” but to reflect is divine. Teachers are human. We get frustrated, lose our tempers, make bad judgment calls and sometimes wish for a do-over button. Unfortunately, there isn't a magical reset button—or is there?

Being an effective, successful teacher does not mean you never make mistakes. It just means we need to learn from them.

A young language arts student teacher directed her class to “close your eyes and imagine what your characters might look like.” I was observing her second-ever presentation to one of the classes where she would practice-teach for the next few weeks.

“Details are very important in descriptions,” she continued, “but you can’t write about them if you can’t see them. Maybe you want to write about a beautiful young girl. Think about the details. She’d have big blue eyes and long blond hair, and her hands would be slender and delicate.”

As she spoke, I watched her seventh-grade students. They represented the lower-middle-class school’s racial and ethnic mix pretty well: About half of them appeared to be Hispanic, almost a third could be considered African-American and the rest looked Caucasian. I didn’t see a blond hair or a blue eye among them. Most also had round, soft bodies.