Culturally Responsive Teaching

Entering this work in summer 2020, a tumultuous and challenging time in U.S. recent history, I knew that culturally competency and responsiveness would be a core pillar of my teaching philosophy. Fast forward a few years to now, and CRT remains one of the most critical, dynamic, and meaningful parts of my work. In addition to considering and thoughtfully reflecting on the lived experiences of the community in which I serve, this ongoing work also strives to ensure everyone in the learning environment, myself included, feels safe, seen, and genuinely engaged in their learning.

Of course, culturally responsive teaching is not something one "does" or can accomplish, it is rather a shift in framework and a critical lens through which to assess curricular, pedagogical, and behavior management systems. To engage CRT in my context, I knew it would be essential to build authentic, and trusting relationships with students and families so that we have a strong foundation to take on challenges, provide feedback, and learn together. To that point, a big piece of this work lies within myself and the lived experiences I have had. Similarly, thoughtful reflection of the self is certainly not something that happens overnight nor is it something that can be considered complete with a few online quizzes or professional development sessions. Rather, my deep personal reflection is an accumulation of many different learning experiences, conversations, and pushes to critically look at implicit bias, blindspots in thinking, and areas of growth. I have been engaging in this work long before I stepped foot into a classroom as an educator, and continue striving for deeper understanding, mutual respect, and strength to be vulnerable in an effort to dismantle the systems of white supremacy culture that make learning so prohibitive to too many. It was only after critical self reflection that I was able to truly begin planning thoughtful lesson plans and classroom routines that felt representative of my students while still offering a look into the world beyond.

Aspiring toward culturally responsive teaching takes a great deal of effort, commitment, belief, and personal work. Through my experiences as an educator at Triumph and as a student at Johns Hopkins, I continue seeking opportunities to refine, review, and reflect my cultural competencies as an educator and person. Taking the time to thoughtfully explore and critically examine my cultural framework has revealed so much about the ways my identity intersects with my role as a teacher and has allowed me to feel more anchored in my "why."

While I believe that I have made a lot of progress toward this goal, I own that I still have a great deal of learning and unlearning to do. As a white female teacher working as an outsider to the community I serve, I will certainly continue to make mistakes, recognize new manifestations of my own cultural bias, and cause harm. Rather than engaging in guilt or fear, I lean into the continuous learning and unlearning baked into this work so that I can more meaningfully leverage my own self reflection and intentional planning to empower my students to be their best, truest selves each day.

Taking ownership of my own identity allows me to be better equipped in the classroom to create productive routines and procedures, make curricular decisions that ensure my students feel proud of who they are, and encourage ongoing critical dialogue within our school community. As such, there is still much work to do. I continuously commit every day to reflect on my own practice individually and with my team, engage families meaningfully into our classroom community through proactive communication, strive for greater understanding through affinity spaces, and push our school to ensure our policies and practices are based on restorative justice. I will continue my own cultural self-study and analysis of blindspots by engaging anti-racist work in the form of reading books like We Want to Do More Than Survive by Dr. Bettina Love and Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain by Zaretta Hammond, ongoing participation in programs like Showing Up For Racial Justice (SURJ) and Jewish Center for Justice (JCJ), and in meaningful conversation in my personal life. In order to continue in this work as a life-long learner and facilitator of learning, I commit to continuous growth and not letting my blindspots hinder my impact in the classroom.