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.