Teachers, Know Your Students
Koppelman (2019) provides a four-part description of culturally responsive teaching. In essence, teachers must know their students and teach students to know themselves (Zoch, 2017). While Koppelman’s assertion that teachers must learn their students seems like a basic premise, teachers may feel pressure to “cover the curriculum” at the expense of forming relationships with their students. Interestingly, Koppelman’s description of culturally responsive teaching aligns with Christian principles as stated by Paul: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (English Standard Version Bible, 2001, Gal. 3:28), his words find their echo in culturally responsive teachers who make a practice of serving the needs of those in their classrooms. The four-part culturally responsive teaching elements give teachers permission to love their students, to invent ways of sparking unity in a diverse classroom, and of honoring the students’ knowledge by building on what they know (see Appendix A). In addition, Koppelman warns against teaching a canned multicultural curriculum for its own sake, as well as avoiding teaching
stereotypes based on the cultural, racial, socio-economic markers of the student population; “Teachers must also strike a balance between recognizing distinct cultural practices of a particular group and yet not stereotyping students according to such practices” (p. 331).
One literary example worth emulating is found in the story of a post-World War II teacher who moved to a small Alaskan village. The following description of Miss Agnes shows her to be a culturally responsive teacher:
Ten-year-old Frederika (Fred for short) doesn’t have much faith that the new teacher in town will last very long. After all, they never do. Most teachers who come to their one-room schoolhouse in remote Alaska leave at the first smell of fish, claiming that life there is just too hard. But Miss Agnes is different — she doesn’t get frustrated with her students, and she throws away old textbooks and reads Robin Hood instead! For the first time, Fred and her classmates begin to enjoy their lessons and learn to read and write — but will Miss Agnes be like all the rest and leave as quickly as she came?” (Hill, 2000).
While teachers like Miss Agnes are rare, they can be encouraged. Teacher education
programs should incorporate multicultural pedagogical practices in their classes. Newly hired
teachers may find their implementation difficult as they face classroom and interpersonal
setbacks, yet they should be encouraged to persevere. “Because culturally responsive teaching
challenges our conventional worldviews and our sense of self in relation to others, it develops
over a lifetime and is not achieved in the short term” (Koppelman, 2019, p. 331). See Appendix
B for a list of characteristics of the culturally responsive teacher.
References
English Standard Version Bible. (2001). Crossway Books.
Hill, K. (2000). The Year of Miss Agnes. Margaret K. McElderry Books.
Koppelman, K. L. (2019). Understanding Human Differences (6th Edition). Pearson Education.
Zoch, M. (2017). “It’s important for them to know who they are”: Teachers’ efforts to sustain students’ cultural competence in an age of high-stakes testing. Urban Education, 52(5), 610-636. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042085915618716
Appendix A
Culturally Responsive Teaching Characteristics Gay (2000), as quoted in Koppelman (2019, p. 328) developed the following list of culturally responsive teaching:
- It acknowledges the legitimacy of the cultural heritages of different ethnic groups, both as legacies that affect students’ dispositions, attitudes, and approaches to learning, and as worthy content to be taught in the formal curriculum.
- It builds bridges of meaningfulness between home and school experiences as well as between academic abstractions and lived sociocultural realities. It uses a wide variety of instructional strategies that are connected to different learning styles.
- It teaches students to know and praise their own and others’ cultural heritages.
- It incorporates multicultural information, resources, and materials in all the subjects and skills routinely taught in schools (p.29).
Appendix B
Characteristics of Culturally Responsive Teachers Richly and Graves (2012) as quoted in Koppelman (2019, pp. 330-331) developed the following list of characteristics of teachers who exhibit culturally responsive teaching practices:
- Caring and empathetic: This does not simply advocate being “nice”; it means having a strong belief that students can learn and being committed to their success in learning.
- Reflective about their attitudes and beliefs concerning other cultures: Teachers must be reflective, honestly examining their preconceptions about groups represented in their classrooms, and sensitive to language that presents a negative image of a group such as “culturally deprived.”
- Reflective about their own cultural frames of reference: Teachers need to become conscious of how they view the world and how that view shapes their choices in the classroom.
- Knowledgeable about other cultures: In order to connect new information to students’ background knowledge, teachers must be knowledgeable about the cultural perspectives and practices of groups that are represented in the classroom.