Culturally Responsive Teaching -- One Unit at a Time
Bringing Culturally Responsive Teaching to Life
The Curriculum Audit Team (L to R): Autumn Hinson, Lissa Erazo, Brooke Kamalani Yuen
#SPCSAlwaysLearning
Culturally responsive teaching - how can we move beyond the buzzword and make this a part of our teaching, not just occasionally but every day and during every lesson? For the past three years, our school has been focused on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and we’re constantly asking - how do we make our student experience, our staff member experience, and our family experience, feel affirming and inclusive? While there was a general consensus that we needed to make meaningful updates to our curriculum that would ensure that the lessons incorporated Culturally Responsive Teaching strategies, as well as texts and topics that were relevant to our primarily Latinx and Black students' lives, some weren’t sure where to start. Enter 2nd Grade Teacher Lissa Erazo, 3rd Grade Teacher Brooke Yuen, and 1st Grade Teacher Autumn Hinson.
Brooke and Lissa wanted to see more action and progress in making our curriculum more responsive to our students' identities -- and ultimately improve the school experience for their students. They came up with a plan and pitched it to our Principal and thanks to their initiative, our Curriculum Audit Team was born. Together they devised a plan for a thorough audit of the curriculum that would give teachers an entry point for making meaningful changes-- helping to remove the stumbling block so many feel in the face of a large challenge-- figuring out where to start. After this initial meeting, Autumn joined the team and they got to work. See below for an interview with Autumn about the status of this project and where it goes next.
How would you describe the goal of the curriculum audit?
As a school we’ve spent the past few years talking about trying new things within the classroom-- using different engagement strategies, making a push for different types of texts. Finally, a group of us were like, “Hey let’s actually do it. Making the curriculum more culturally responsive comes up all the time, but when do we have time? If the school year is going along and I’m about to launch a unit and then I don’t know where to start when it comes to making changes then it’s hard to make those changes. We needed the time and the space to step back and think about those changes and honestly, COVID was an opportunity for a reset.
What motivated you to be a part of the team?
The students are always what motivates me, I want these changes to help our kids. I was really grounding myself in culturally responsive teaching strategies when I was teaching Summer School and I saw the results. That warmed my teacher heart-- seeing students’ engagement increase and teaching them to advocate for their own learning.
What strategies did you find to be most effective?
Making my lessons more student-centered-- for example, using students' experiences in my word problems or teaching examples. It’s also about noticing that not every strategy works for every kid. I think I would also say, it’s not just about representation in texts or with other content, that’s important, it’s about how kids are interacting and processing the content.
How did you prepare to do this work? How did you get started?
We sat down and started with our why. We wrote out for ourselves why this work mattered and how we wanted to share that with teachers. We also didn’t want teachers to feel like they had all this work to do but didn’t know where to start, so we knew we wanted the audit to give them a starting place. We also decided on grade bands so each of us could really focus on specific grades and content areas. Then what we did really depended on the curriculum itself-- maybe we added suggestions for different texts or maybe we reflected on skills that had been tricky for kids and provided suggestions for other ways for students to engage with a concept or idea like I did with a Kindergarten Story Elements unit that had been difficult for our kiddos in the past. Our goal was to set up teachers for success.
Commenting in Google Docs streamlined feedback for teachers.
What was challenging about it?
I made it more challenging for myself, by looking really deeply at every lesson and trying to see the lesson from the perspective of a student. I would ask myself, am I getting a chance to show my thinking in a different way? Am I getting a chance to ask for help, or getting some time to process? This was especially challenging from a young students’ perspective.
Where does this work go next?
I hope it goes far because I spent a lot of time in front of the computer this summer making comments on google docs! I hope that with the suggestions we gave, teachers will feel empowered and they will also want to empower their students to use their strengths so that their learning will be “sticky”. Also, teachers will be meeting with our team to share their updates and changes and we will be providing continued support and feedback.
Suggestions for further reading/watching:
