Setting the Course

for a successful adventure

Culturally Responsive Teaching Trip Tips by: Fabiola Torres ftorres@glendale.edu

Choose the right road for a safe, fun, informative and adventurous road trip. To get the most of your learning experience road trip, consider using the Culturally Responsive Teaching and Learning Trip Tips

Clean your car before and during your trip.

Look at your course and check for deficient/unwelcoming language. Pay attention to deficient, intimidating, unwelcoming messages. Encourage success vs scaring or intimidating students.

Instead Of Use This

For online environments, add a welcome video.

To facilitate this process, culturally responsive educators must deepen our commitment to providing welcoming and supportive environments that are based upon equity principles and high-impact practices to address disparities, close achievement gaps, and meet the needs of each student. The supportive, growth mindset message is vital creating a healthy partnership between you and your passengers

2. Check your vehicle.

In your online class, check flow of your course. See if all your links work. Use the Course Link Validator in your course settings to see if all your links work. Check your Accessibility checker. Go through the flow of your course on a mobile device.

Please check out Foothill College's 10 day Accessibility Challenge. Super helpful in enabling your Canvas course to be accessible.

3. Offer a Plan

Don’t keep your passengers in the dark. When you share your plan, you are provoking action.

Introduction and Summary pages with the same information

It is not dumbing down rigor because they get to see what’s happening in the next weeks or 2 or even the whole class. To the contrary, caring teachers demonstrate respect to students, provide choices and are tenacious in their efforts to make information taught more understandable to them.

In an online course, one can take time to develop fillable docs to assist in creating an outline, walk- through audio/video files, model papers or design formative assessments that build into the summative assessment.

4. Anticipate trouble spots.

Rigorous expectations are part of the journey. Providing them model answers, helpful videos or a warning sign to give them a heads up. You can provide a message like: “You really want to look out for X...” or “Here’s a strategy.”

5. Add Entertainment.

Have fun. Start creating a community! Prompt effort and achievement by showing that you really care. Tell your story. Tell you story of struggle, failure, success and achievements. Supportive instructional styles incorporating reciprocal experiences, such as providing students feedback reflecting our stories, can improve cognitive understanding between the students and the instructor. Let them know they are not alone in their learning process.

6. Tend to division of labor.

Some people are good at navigating; others couldn’t read a map if they tried. Some people are good at planning meals, while others think a big bag of chips counts as a good dinner. As you move forward in your course, identify who does what well, and what really matters to your students. Be clinical. Take notes on what students share. Referencing a student’s comment or work or even previous work in your feedback is like that teacher who put up your art project up on the board. It felt good. But keep notes of all students.

7. Join a roadside rescue service.

OK In this case, talk to other community college instructors. A great source is Twitter. #CCCLearn Use your instructional resources. Roadside assistance is there.

#CCCCLean

8. Practice safe driving skills.

We probably learned how to drive by watching our parents, model a behavior that truly encouraged and advocates for success. Be human. Use culturally inclusive images to promote a learning environment that just might connect with a student. Teachers model personal values such as patience, persistence and responsibility while incorporating skills such as self-determination throughout their curriculum. If there is something currently affecting the community you serve, do not ignore it. Make it front and center.

9. Know your driving limit.

Don’t drive and not enjoy the process. Being strategic with your formative assessments and your summative assessment. The best part of making it enjoyable is finally getting that connection with your students! So feedback become the most important tool. Over packing your course with activity with no ties to the unit outcomes will be exhausting. We need to have room in creating inclusive supportive learning environments that help our students find their voice, fulfill their potential, and reach their educational goals.

10. Bring Snacks.

Caring is a process and we have to do what it takes to keep them engaged. When teachers are committed, competent, confident and knowledgeable about the content in cultural pluralism, they are placed "... in an ethical, emotional and academic partnership with ethnically diverse students. This partnership, this care is anchored in respect, honor, integrity, resource-sharing, and a deep belief in the possibility of transcendence, that is, an unequivocal belief that marginalized students not only can but will improve their school achievement under the tutelage of competent and committed teachers who act to ensure that this happens.

Provide Digital Cookies - strategies that will feed their success in your class or others.

An example of Wise Up to Rise Up Wednesdays: Visit Episode 4

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