Incorporate Students' Cultural Practices
Overview
Learning about students' cultures and connecting them to instructional practices helps foster a Sense of Belonging, increase positive student Identity development, and mitigate Stereotype Threat. When educators integrate the linguistic and cultural funds of knowledge that learners bring into the classroom, they help learners draw on their Background Knowledge to better understand and relate to the material, supporting Motivation and learning. Incorporating culturally oriented techniques into learning opportunities, such as call and response, music, or storytelling, can promote Attention and encoding into Long-term Memory. Storytelling can help learners understand the real-world importance of the content being learned in the classroom. For example, connecting number and magnitude to learners' Background Knowledge and experiences in the Home Learning Environment. Teachers can also create assignments that allow students to connect to their communities. For example, students can collect data on an environmental issue in their community and analyze and discuss the data in class, which can help to build Civic Mindedness.
Example: Use This Strategy in the Classroom
Watch how these middle schoolers use STEM and design thinking to improve challenges in their own community.
Design It into Your Product
Additional Resources
Additional examples, research, and professional development. These resources are possible representations of this strategy, not endorsements.
Factors Supported by this Strategy
More Culturally Responsive Strategies
Developing empathy in educators and in learners is an iterative process that requires taking the time to understand and honor others' perspectives.
Checking in with learners, or taking the time to talk with individual learners about their experiences or goals, is important for fostering a positive classroom environment.
Developing cultural awareness as an educator is an ongoing process that includes a recognition and appreciation for the full diversity of students and an understanding of how one's own Identity intersects with students' Identities.
Discussing race with students can range from conversations on cultural celebration (e.g., celebrating the importance of diversity) to developing critical consciousness (e.g., understanding the impact of social inequities like racism and how to dismantle it).
A first step to supporting learners is truly understanding who they are.
Equitable grading systems and practices reimagine how to communicate student progress and mastery through various methods that reduce subjectivity, and increase opportunities to learn.
Family engagement happens when educators and schools collaborate with families to collectively support their child's learning in meaningful ways, both at school and at home.
Culturally responsive texts include those that reflect different facets of students' identities, including race, ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic, and disability status, as well as the intersections of those identities.
Shadowing a student involves an educator, administrator, or designated adult observing a learner across different parts of their day to deepen their understanding of that learner's experience beyond their classroom.
Translanguaging is a flexible classroom practice enabling students to listen, speak, read, and write across their multiple languages or dialects, even if the teacher does not have formal knowledge of these additional languages.
