What is culturally responsive teaching?

Culturally responsive teaching is a form of teaching that emphasizes the importance of including students’ cultural backgrounds in the learning environment. Burnham believes that in a classroom full of students we have to understand that each kid doesn’t come from the same background or environment, so culturally responsive teaching is a way for us to tie all those differences in and inform our students of them and just overall make them aware of everyone having their unique backgrounds and embracing them and accepting others and their backgrounds (Burnham, 2020). Culturally responsive teaching allows for more diversity and inclusion in the classroom. It also allows teachers to become informed on our students’ backgrounds and gain a better understanding of the outside factors that may influence their performance and mentalities.

Culturally responsive teaching is used to help empower our students and make those cultural connections to their academics whenever we can, but also just to be able to talk about it in the classroom in general, not just when doing an assignment or reading a book. I found Michael Vavrus’ meaning most powerful in which he believes that it’s all about acknowledging and taking pieces of each students’ culture and making meaningful connections to uplift and inform (Vavrus, 2008). CRT is in a way a response to the traditional method of teaching and the normal curriculum in which most of what is being taught is pretty tailored towards more European culture and doesn’t represent your minority groups, but also you need to be fully aware of the different needs of each students and what some students may not have access to that some do. Culturally responsive teaching is our way to transform and shift that type of learning to include everyone, but also allows everyone to stay connected and interested in the lessons and learn more about one another and themselves. It connects students’ cultures and life experiences with the curriculum and brings this idea of multiculturalism into the classroom environment by embracing diversity and validating their experiences in the world and giving them a new sense of confidence.

How can we implement culturally responsive teaching into the classroom?

Culturally responsive teaching can’t be done effectively, unless you first address your own stereotypes and biases as well as those topics you tend to stray away from because you fear the conversation and comments it may bring (Rucker, 2019). That first step is the most important because whether you want to admit it or not you do create your own biases and stereotypes that may affect how you view your students or the conversations you choose to have and you can’t help your students or create that safe, welcoming environment if you’re part of the problem. One of the first ways that you can implement culturally responsive teaching is honestly giving your students a diverse selection of books. There’s such a wide selection of multicultural books out there that there’s no reason your classroom library shouldn’t be diverse and just a kid seeing themselves being represented in a book could be such a confidence booster and make them feel special and seen. Not only that, books are ways we educate ourselves and that could be a way other students become informed. Another important strategy would be to include them in the decision making process as far as, “How should we treat each other/How do we want to be treated in the classroom” and different things like that because it allows them to share what they value. There are so many ways for this to be implemented into the classroom, but the last ones I want to touch on is building strong relationships with each of your students along with getting to know them better and putting a lot of thought and effort into your lessons. If you have that strong foundation then you’ll start to know what works for your students and what doesn’t and they’ll be more comfortable communicating with you and possibly sharing more about them. However, none of this is possible until we start shifting it into our curriculum, which leads me to the lesson planning process. We should be trying to include our students’ into our lessons and activities wherever we can and that takes more time and creative thought, which we should be willing to do if it means that every student sees themselves in the curriculum and has a fair chance at succeeding.