culturally responsive teaching

Many educators will hear an Appalachian accent and automatically write off that student as unintelligent and un-teachable.  This only serves to perpetuate the image of the uneducated and ignorant mountain people.  Our poor isolated school systems already make things more difficult without saddling our students with this unfair cultural deficit perspective.  When we do this, students feel inadequate, insecure and perform poorly overall.  It is essential for teachers in Appalachia to understand the dialect and its nuances not as incorrect or as a cultural deficit but as simply a cultural difference.  By having the cultural difference perspective and understanding that their students way of speech is simply a different way to say the same things they will not only be able to communicate better with their students but they will encourage the students to be more comfortable and active in the classroom.  If we reach them young and let them know that having an accent or speaking with an Appalachian dialect does not mean you are slow or dim witted.  It is simply a sign of your culture and where you come from. “children come to school with different experiences.   The experiences they have as young children are culturally driven.   Within this, I see literacy use as cultural practice.  It is cultural practice because reading and writing are woven into the everyday experiences of people , and these everyday activities, attitudes, and beliefs help to define and distinguish among cultural groups”(Purcell-Gates 2002).
The best and easiest way to overcome the cultural deficit perspective is to simply see things as differences not in a right or wrong perspective.  If a teacher understands their student’s differences and how and where they originate, they can work with them and actually use them to their advantage.   When a teacher pulls in resources from the community and family this can not only make the student feel better about their culture but can reinforce the lesson being taught.  After all before children start school everything they learn comes from these rich funds of knowledge.  The “demonstration of the funds of knowledge available will help educators and psychologists gain a more positive view of these able, but misjudged youngsters”  (Moll 1992).
In many ways teachers are to blame for student’s not learning generation after generation.  When a teacher makes a judgment based on where a student grew up or who their parents were and decides that this particular student is un-teachable this teacher is perpetuating the cultural deficit perspective.  Essentially saying that the student’s cultural is making it impossible for them to learn.   This is nonsense, as proven day after day by thousands of students and teachers across the country.  How do these examples happen when so many others prove the point?  They follow the cultural difference theory.   As stated earlier, simply seeing elements of culture as different and not as a negative or wrong element at all.  These teachers and students find an understanding of culture and use it to encourage more active learning rather than seeing it as a hurdle to be overcome.  “ In this way, Cultural Difference Theorists are more focused on the `micro' elements of people's lives and communities.  As Erickson points out this theory "provided a way of seeing classroom troubles as inadvertent misunderstanding--teachers and students playing into each other's cultural blind spots"” (Bolima, n.d.).
A good way to improve literacy instruction for non-standard English speakers is to have them write and give a  small explanation about themselves and where they come from much in the same way we did with our where I am from videos.  By writing it they improve their “proper English” but by giving a presentation in whatever means they have the ability to get their thoughts across in their own words and own ability.   This not only allows them to pull from their funds of knowledge  and shows them that you place value on where they come from, it encourages them to feel pride in who they are and their cultural capital.  Their family and the knowledge they instilled in them before we as teachers got ahold of them can in many cases be of more value in the long run and we need to acknowledge that.    By encouraging them to do projects like the where I am from written and spoken project you are employing several strategies for culturally responsive teaching.   Our own videos are excellent examples of this.    Our videos built bridges of meaningfulness between home and school not only by giving the instructor insight into our personal lives by allowing the other students to view them we were able to find things in common we otherwise might not have known.  Many students lives are full of important or interesting facts or events that would beneficial to the class and by sharing them it acknowledges the legitimacy of their cultural heritage as worthy content to be taught in the formal curriculum. And of course by allowing us to view each other’s work  we were able to praise and know each other’s heritages.
In my social studies classroom I plan on implementing many strategies for a culturally responsive classroom.  I especially like having students interview older family members about life when they were teenagers even having student s do family trees.  Many times the students find out things they never would have imagined and that can lead to in class discussions.  When students interview family, they will then have to research a detail out of the information to expand on.  For instance, if a student’s grandfather was a coal miner he may have to research the changes in coal mining over the years then put together a presentation to show how the tools have changed.  They could do the usual research methods, images or even local museums, so long as the end product is easy to follow and covers all the important details.

Purcell-Gates, V. (2002). “...As soon as she opened her mouth!” In L. Delpit & J.K. Dowdy (Eds.), The skin that we speak: An anthology of essays on language, culture and power.

 Bolimia, D. (n.d.). Context for understanding for Educational Learning Theories  Retrieved October 5, 2012:  http://staff.washington.edu/saki/strategies/101/new_page_5.htm

Moll, L. (1992). Funds of Knowledge for teaching: Using a qualitative approach to
connect homes and classrooms. (1992). Theory into Practice, 31(2), 132-41.