Culturally Relevant Pedagogy

Culturally relevant pedagogy “means recognizing and celebrating those students who show up to our classrooms daily, welcoming their voices, demanding their reflection, and encouraging them toward self-discovery” (Fink, 2016). This helps to encourage those who may have been done wrong by our system to no give up and the we care about their success. In a culturally relevant classroom, the academic expectations are held high, there is an understanding based on differences in student teacher backgrounds culturally, and the inequality is acknowledged and addressed.

I teach at a predominantly black high school, where a lot of my students come in from the city. I did not grow up in the city and have not experienced life as many of them have. From coming from homes with a single parent to foster care to homeless home situations, it is sometimes hard to understand where my students are coming from. By creating a culturally relevant classroom, I can better relate to my students in understanding what they like and how they think, what they may have been through and what they can relate to.

In creating a culturally relevant classroom, there many things that I already do to incorporate this idea. In AP Statistics, my students read a lot of articles and analyze many different types of data sets. To make this culturally relevant, I try to use a lot of sport references and show a movie or video, here and there, that show these concepts. I work to make my materials relate to student interest and current events to gain student interests and engagement. I can use articles of different events that can relate to minority rights and civil disputes that have taken place in society that has made it what it is today.

Creating a more culturally relevant classroom, there are some things that I can do to improve my classroom environment. Instead of having students learn about what is, I can teach them to about what can be. In one of the articles I read this week, Dr. Jeff Duncan-Andrade stated, “Schooling is the process by which you institutionalize people to accept their place in a society… Education is the process through which you teach them to transform it” (Escudero, 2019). To do this, I need to focus the purpose of my lessons more in the academic and personal success of the individual student more than I already do. I do give students more culturally relevant texts, but I need to also give them more on the inequality side of the house. I need to be sure that I am addressing cultural competence, sociopolitical consciousness, and academic achievement equally and not one more heavily than the others.

References

Fink, L. (2016, February 21). Culturally Relevant Pedagogy. Retrieved from https://ncte.org/blog/2016/02/culturally-relevant-pedagogy/

Escudero, B. (2019, January 6). How to Practice Culturally Relevant Pedagogy. Retrieved from https://www.teachforamerica.org/stories/how-to-engage-culturally-relevant-pedagogy