Personal Growth

Personal Growth

The first step in the journey to becoming culturally responsive is to unpack your own thinking in order to identify your own cultural norms, preferences and ways of thinking. This helps you recognize both similarities and differences that you have with your students and their families. Seeing culture as an asset challenges misconceptions.

Understanding Culture

Culture is generally defined as the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group and the characteristic features of everyday existence (such as diversions or a way of life) shared by people in a place or time (Merriam Webster.)

The Cultural Iceberg video (left) helps explain the visible and invisible aspects of culture.

Understanding Identity

Personal and Social Identity Wheels


Understanding your personal and social identity helps you find common ground with other people and learn more about each other. Understanding that about yourself helps you share aspects of your identity with other people while building community. This knowledge and sharing encourages empathy. Your personal identity helps you describe yourself to other people.


To learn more about yourself, fill out and complete a copy of the:



Further Understanding Social Identity

Below are examples of social identity groupings. Since issues of social identity often are the basis of much social conflict, it is reasonable to expect that even the terms we use to describe them may cause disagreement. So feel free to use your own preferred terms for the material below.


Examples (Feel free to use your own language for your identities.)

  • Gender: Woman, Man, Transgender, Post-Gender

  • Sex: Intersex, Female, Male

  • Race: Asian Pacific Islander, Native American, LatinX, Black, White, Bi/Multiracial

  • Ethnicity: Irish, Chinese, Puerto Rican, Italian, Mohawk, Jewish, Guatemalan, Lebanese, European-American

  • Sexual Orientation: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Pan-Attractional, Heterosexual, Queer, Questioning

  • Religion/Spirituality: Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, Jewish, Christian, Pagan, Agnostic, Faith/Meaning, Atheist, Secular Humanist

  • Social Class: Poor, Working Class, Lower-Middle Class, Upper-Middle Class, Owning Class, Ruling Class

  • Age: Child, Young Adult, Middle-Age Adult, Elderly

  • (Dis)Ability: People with disabilities (cognitive, physical, emotional, etc.), Temporarily able-bodied, Temporarily disabled

  • Nation(s) of Origin: United States, Nigeria, Korea, Turkey, Argentina and/or Citizenship Tribal or Indigenous Mohawk, Aboriginal, Navajo, Santal Affiliation

  • Body Size/Type: Fat, Person of Size, Thin


Marginalized Group: social identity groups that are disenfranchised and exploited

Privileged Group: social identity groups that hold unearned privileged in society


After you have completed the Social Identity Wheel, reflect on these questions:

  • What did you feel or learn that surprised you?

  • Do you think that other people at Shen would respond to these questions in the same way that you did? Why or why not?

  • Was this activity worth doing? Why or why not?


Source: The Program on Intergroup Relations, University of Michigan

Understanding Implicit Bias

Our life experiences have formed stereotypes which have then turned into implicit bias. These unintentional, unconscious attitudes impact how we relate to our students, their parents, and colleagues. You can learn more about your own implicit bias by taking Harvard University’s Project Implicit online test. Identify the places in your life where you might have allowed your implicit biases to get in the way of forming authentic relationships with students, their parents and your colleagues.