Fully engaging in an equity framework in education requires teachers to rethink their relationship with their students. All students bring cultural value to school and educators must design environments to close the racial achievement, opportunity and acknowledgement gaps through recognizing and celebrating cultural value by designing in cultural inclusivity.
The following components in an equity-minded syllabus promoting cultural inclusivity includes:
A powerful tool/strategy in promoting cultural inclusivity is Culturally Responsive Teaching & Learning (CRTL). CRTL enables us to:
Practitioners of Culturally Responsive Teaching and Learning become the cultural translators or cultural bridge builders. Teachers take the prior cultural experiences from their students and connect between what is known and what is to be taught and understood. The underlying premise of CRTL is based on the notion that the dilemma in the achievement gap is the incompatibility between the cultural filters used to send instructional messages to students from the school frame of reference and how students receive messages through their own set of cultural filters. If they do not connect with the instructional messages, then learning doesn't happen. We are not equitizing our communication when our instructional messages do not connect. We'd like to suggest that we need to create Ratatouille Moments in our courses.
Okay, we admit that this may need an explanation! A Ratatouille Moment is what Chef David Chang calls a moment in which something takes us back to a familiar place, a safe place, and a happy place. Just like we described a smell, touch, sound, look, sight of home in our first greeting to one another, we are able to connect to a place of familiarity. Chang states, "The easiest way to accomplish this is just to cook something that people have eaten a million times. But it’s much more powerful to evoke those taste memories while cooking something that seems unfamiliar—to hold those base patterns constant while completely changing the context." In short, when our students are engaging in complex, unfamiliar topics, we need to intentionally evoke cultural connections and build bridges between the unfamiliar to the familiar--we need to construct a Ratatouille Moment. David Chang’s Unified Theory of Deliciousness
Let's watch Anton Ego, the famously mean food critic, eat the ratatouille made by Remy, the rat. The dish is the crux of the entire story, hence the title of the film, Ratatouille.
In this 48 second video, Remy’s transformative eating experience connects him with a familiar, safe, and happy place. Think about how our teaching can create powerful moments of learning, engagement, and transformation when effort is made to build connection between the cultural experiences of our students--what they know--and what is being taught.
Our goal to develop strategies to eliminate achievement gaps by addressing learning barriers. Thinking about how students receive and filter information through a cultural frame will help you develop insights into building connections to content.
Imagine that the ratatouille is a lesson, Anton is the student, and the emotion of connection is that moment our student gets "unstuck." How can we get there? Let's start with CRTL. Below are great references to help us focus on CRTL strategies.
We are focused on eliminating achievement gaps--through policies and plans developed to address the issues that contribute to these gaps. However, the language used by our institutions carry within it the very harm the policies are designed to address. For example, our campus might have DE policies that authenticate student participation in the first week of the course. Although our DE policies may use deficient, intimidating, unwelcoming messages, we can still encourage success vs scaring or intimidating students
Instead of "Mandatory," begin with, "Plan to succeed"
Instead of "Dropped from the course"..., begin with "I will check in on you if you forget to participate."
Instead of "Rigorous exceptions", begin with, “You really want to look out for X, and here’s a strategy so that it doesn’t happen.”
Instead of "Requirements," begin with, "Tips for success"
Instead of "No Excuses," begin with, "Search for solutions and communicate with me"
Instead of "Your Responsibility," begin with "Confusion is normal. Contact me."