Radical Care

Caring Doesn't Mean Being "Color-Blind"

There are 5 assumptions about teaching with a "colorblind" attitude:

  1. Education has nothing to do with culture and heritage.

  2. Conventional teaching practices should reflect European American core cultural values.

  3. Teachers mistakenly believe that to treat students differently because of their cultural orientation is racial discrimination.

  4. Good teaching is transcendent. It's identical for all students.

  5. Education is an effective doorway of assimilation into mainstream society.

It may not be color-blindness, but these attitudes do create blindspots. Applying an equity lens helps to surface and examine these attitudes, blindspots, and practices. Geneva Gay notes that CRTL "begins by exposing the fallacy of cultural neutrality and the homogeneity syndrome in teaching and learning for Native, African, Latino and Asian American students who are not performing very well on traditional measures of school achievement" (Gay 29). However, the process of exposing and admitting the fallacy of cultural neutrality and the homogeneity syndrome within ourselves is hard for it requires self-discovery and acknowledgement of our own implicit biases, and the courage to purge them.

Core Values of Caring

  1. Caring is attending to person and performance. Teachers model personal values such as patience, persistence and responsibility while incorporating skills such as self-determination throughout their curriculum. In other words, culturally responsive caring teachers cultivate efficacy and agency in ethnically diverse students.

  2. Caring is action-provoking. It is not dumbing down rigor. To the contrary, caring teachers demonstrate respect for students, provide choices and work to ensure information is taught in an understandable manner. In an online course, a teacher might take time to develop a template for students to assist them with creating an outline; record a video to demonstrate how to complete an assignment; provide model papers for students to consider in advance; organize complex projects into stages with clear deliverables; provide low-stake, formative assessments that foster confidence in students and scaffold their learning towards a summative assessment.

  3. Caring Prompts Effort and Achievement. Tell your story...of struggle, failure, success, or achievement. Neuroscience shows that when a person listens to another person tell a story, similar parts of the listener and speakers brains are activated. This process, known as neural coupling, demonstrates that story-telling builds empathy. Designing assignments that provide students with the option to reflect on their life experiences can improve cognitive understanding between the students and the instructor. Let them know they are not alone in their learning process and demonstrate the importance of applying a growth mindset.

  4. Caring is multidimensional responsiveness. Caring is a process. 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 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" (Gay 69).

TED Talk: Help for kids the education system ignores.

Exemplified and Personified: Victor Rios

Please watch the 12 minute video to learn more about his philosophy. As you listen to Rios, please listen to how his teacher, Ms. Russ, demonstrated caring and inspired Victor’s strategies for helping teachers connect with and support students.

Message from Fabiola Torres:

Please remember to lead with your heart and bring your whole self to the learning environment so that you may continue to teach and inspire that student who needs your expertise, talents, and wisdom to help them succeed. Think deeply about the policies and practices that impact our students' lives, and continue to be allies for them. And be sure to share this work with your colleagues in your institution, in department meetings, with your campus leadership. And consider participating in or helping to lead equity efforts at your institution!

As equity practitioners, let's move forward with our sleeves rolled up, hearts and minds committed to helping each of our students experience success. Let's embrace the work ahead because we now have more strategies and skills to effectively address equity gaps in the online learning environment.