Culturally Responsive Teaching: 4 Misconceptions

10 things every white teacher should know when talking about race This week on the Truth for Teachers podcast: 10 things every white teacher should know when talking about race in the classroom Let’s start by addressing the elephant in the room–why I am talking only to white people? Isn’t that racist? (Hold that question in your mind, because I want you to ask yourself that same question again after you’ve read my words here, and see if your thought process has changed.) I’m specifically addressing white people in this episode because around 83% of teachers in the U.S. are white. Most of you reading my blog are in fact, white.

Making Connections: Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain In reality, cultural responsiveness is more of a process than a strategy. It begins when a teacher recognizes the cultural capital and tools students of color bring to the classroom. She is then able to respond to students' use of these cultural learning tools positively by noticing, naming, and affirming when students use them in the service of learning. The most common cultural tools for processing information utilize the brain's memory systems -- music, repetition, metaphor, recitation, physical manipulation of content, and ritual. The teacher is "responsive" when she is able to mirror these ways of learning in her instruction, using similar strategies to scaffold learning.

How to Choose Outstanding Multicultural Books How do you know if a children's book you're about to share with your students accurately portrays the culture of its characters? Are there warning signs to look for? Are there telltale things that mark an outstanding multicultural book? To answer these questions, Scholastic Teacher magazine invited five children's literature specialists to give us their candid advice on selecting books about or related to Native Americans, Latinos, African Americans, Jews, and Asian Americans. Within each section of this article, you'll find:

A Culturally Responsive Approach to Discussing Thanksgiving in the Classroom In this ongoing series, we explore what culturally responsive teaching looks like at different grade levels and offer concrete examples and resources. Last week we explored going beyond “The Single Story”. Today, educator Lindsay Barrett offers a culturally responsive approach to discussing Thanksgiving in the Classroom. More in this series: Discussions of holidays can be challenging for teachers to navigate. School expectations can range from complete avoidance to blind participation in longstanding outdated projects and events.

Classroom Library Assessment: How Culturally Responsive is Your Library? Teachers, let’s talk about a popular topic across education blogs and Pinterest: the classroom library. A quick search on the Internet results in numerous tips, tricks, and ideas for different ways to configure and organize your classroom library. It’s an intensive and thoughtful process that involves thinking about genre, reading levels, interest levels, grade-level content, categories, and themes. HuffPost is now a part of Verizon Media I have taught literature at the college level for almost a decade and at as many as six different campuses. These have mainly been classes that were focused on non-western writing. One semester, I had assigned Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus and only a week earlier her TED talk, Danger of a Single Story had started to circulate on the web. I sent the link to my students and thought we could incorporate it into our discussion on colonialism, multiculturalism, issues of race and of course, the novel itself. Little did I know that this simple talk would elicit the intensely disproportionate response that landed in my inbox the next morning. A young male student had found the video very offensive.

CCBC Booklists Compiled by Megan Schliesman, Kathleen T. Horning and Merri V. Lindgren For Our White Friends Desiring to Be Allies Author's Note: I'm writing this in hopes that it can be used to lighten the load of marginalized folks, keeping in mind that not all marginalized people want to engage in the ally conversation, and that is perfect as well. For those who do, my prayer is that when someone asks you the question, “how can I be a stronger ally?” you might choose to save your breath/energy and send this in its place.

Can diverse children's books tackle prejudice? Over the past three years, Dias has collected more than 11,000 books. She is in the process of donating all the books and has given more than half to what she describes as "predominantly black and underserved" communities in the US, Haiti, Ghana, Jamaica and the UK. The young activist from New Jersey has even gone on to author her own book -- "Marley Dias Gets It Done" -- and is currently developing an app so kids can find "black girl books" more easily. "I hope that my campaign will mean more opportunities for our stories to be told and for books with black girls as the main character to be put on bookshelves worldwide," she tells CNN.

Strategies To Support Multicultural Instruction Essential for developing multicultural/diverse perspective learnings is a positive and trusting classroom environment - one in which all students are made to feel welcome, comfortable, and respected. Listed below are several strategies that are particularly useful in promoting multicultural/diverse perspective learnings in such a classroom. Questioning Styles Questioning techniques that personally involve students will allow them to respond in a way that reflects their cultural diversity and that will expose their fellow students to those differences (Evans, 1991).

The 10 Best Multicultural Young Adult Novels of 2016 Following my lists of Best Multicultural Picture Books of 2016 and Best Multicultural Middle Grade Novels of 2016, I am finishing this mini-series with a list of this year’s best multicultural young adult novels. My personal favourites are Kids of Appetite and The Sun Is Also A Star. Which ones are yours? The 10 Best Multicultural Young Adult Novels of 2016 Teaching Black History in Culturally Responsive Ways As Black History Month kicked off, I was reflecting on my time as a student. My experience all those years ago was similar to that of most black children today: mostly white teachers teaching black history primarily in February. I was told of Martin Luther King Jr., Harriet Tubman, and Frederick Douglass. I heard very little of Malcolm X, the FBI’s campaign against civil rights leaders, the Rainbow Coalition put together by the Black Panther Party’s Fred Hampton, or Hampton’s assassination. I learned about the struggles of my enslaved ancestors, but not about Gabriel Prosser, Denmark Vesey, or Nat Turner.