What is it About Me You Can’t
Teach?: Culturally Responsive
Teaching Practices (CRT)
Eleanor Renee Rodriguez, Ph.D.
March 26, 2013
Greensboro, North Carolina
What about Me: Culturally Responsive Teaching Practices (CRT)
Welcome, Overview, goals and introductions
Goals: “Participants will develop taxonomy of strategies to increase student engagement,
develop students’ cognitive skills, and empower students to take responsibility for their
own learning. They will develop a professional and personal plan, incorporating the
strategies and practices modeled, practiced and refined.
They will identify the key components of a well-designed, culturally responsive lesson.
They will apply new understandings to increase achievement with diverse student
populations”
We will meet our goals by:
Gaining an overview of the necessity for CRT practices
Understanding the basic tenets of practices of CRT
Introducing and practicing the knowledge, understandings and skills necessary
to be successful with students with different cultural experiences
Identifying ways to engage all students to learn the content, especially those who
fall behind and consistently stay behind
Instruction with the real world and diverse students in mind
Helping teachers improve their effectiveness
TAXONOMY OF RESEARCH, THEORIES, STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES FOR
CULTURALLY RESPONSIVE TEACHING
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Reflect upon current teaching practices
What is CRT?
Teaching and learning practices that recognize the differences between previously
traditional homogenous groupings, and proactively plan and implement those practices
with the goal of what students should know and be able to do, how they will learn it and
how we know they learned it, based on the cultural differences, not deficits they bring to
school
What CRT is not?
Participating in periodic celebrations and activities for each ethnic group represented, like
during Black History Month, Cinco De Mayo, the Chinese New Year and others.
Homogeneous practices with the average student in mind, without consideration of the
experiences diverse students bring to the classroom.
What does diversity mean in your classroom? School? District?
Why: Research that supports CRT:
The foundation of the research by Rueben Feuerstein on Instructional Enrichment (IE) in
the book, What is it About Me You Can’t Teach? An Instructional Guide for the Urban
Educator and similar work and research by Carol Ann Tomlinson, Augusta Mann, David
Hyerle, Howard Gardner, Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe and others serves as
documentation as well as justification of providing educational experiences to meet the
student we currently
Discuss shifts for teachers, teacher leaders and administrators in the past 10-20 years
Make connections between our traditional practices and the practices needed for diverse
student populations
Examples of Research-based Strategies, Theories and
Practices KWL-D
Asset Based Education
Brain-based Strategies
Common Core State Standards (CCSS)
Differentiation Instruction (DI)
Graphic/Thinking Organizers
Instrumental Instruction (IE)
Learning Styles
Multiple Intelligences (MI)
Understanding by Design (UbD)
Questions/Reflections
What did you want the learner know and be able to do? Why?
How did you make the lesson relevant and engaging for all students?
How did you determine students understood and met your expectations?
Asset Based Education
Bottom Line: a laser focus on students assets instead of their
deficits by acknowledging, recognizing, utilizing and enhancing
students’ abilities to improve their success, with teaching and
learning in place by both students and educators
Brain-based Strategies
Bottom Line: The godfather of non-traditional teaching practices
with purposeful engagement, based on the educational
neurosciences focused on real life and emotional structures of the
brain and its related research including mastery learning, learning
styles, multiple intelligences, cooperative learning, problem based
learning and others
Common Core State Standards (CCSS)
Bottom Line: Provides a consistent understanding of what
students are suppose to learn to prepare them for college and career
readiness with relevant and real world applications
Differentiation Instruction (DI)
Bottom Line: We are not all the same, so we should not be taught
the same way. Students are different and instruction should reflect
the differences by content, process and product through student’s
level of readiness, learning styles and interests. .
Graphic/Thinking Organizers
Bottom Line: Visual tools and graphic organizers using concept
maps to improve instruction and student engagement which helps
the brain organize and process information
Instrumental Instruction (IE)
Bottom Line: an interactive program for cognitive modifiability
for the enhancement of learning using content free materials to
develop and improve cognitive deficiencies.
Learning Styles
Bottom Line: Tools based on a learners preferred or dominant
psychological types and styles, with distinctive abilities and
aptitudes
Multiple Intelligences (MI)
Bottom Line: A theory developed by Howard Gardner stating that
people understand and perceive the world in different ways,
initially starting with seven ways of knowing, or most frequently
referred to as Multiple Intelligences
Understanding by Design (UbD)
Bottom Line: An effort to improve the designing skills of
educators by providing a conceptual framework for planning, and
making clear lines of demarcation between knowing and
understanding in lesson and assessment development
Asset Based Instruction
Focus on Student’s Assets
Identify three students that give you the most
challenges and why. Follow the process and complete
the task below for each student identified.
1.
2.
3.
Recognition Acknowledgement Utilization Enhancement -
Touching the Spirit ®
Utilizing Culture in the Achievement of Educational Excellence
for African American and Other Students
African and African American Teaching and Learning Patterns
Ritual
(Affirmations/performances)
Rhythm
(In music, speech and movement)
Recitation
(Oral performance/memorization)
Repetition
(To enhance meaningfulness)
Relationships
(Relationships of love, respect, and belonging)
(Recognizing ties between humans and nature)
(Scientific study of patterns in nature and the phenomenal world
(Making connections between school work and students’ life
experiences)
Used Within a Context of Nine Supportive Practices
1) Expectations of Excellence
2) Continual Search for Patterns
3) Insistence on Working Toward Mastery
4) Teacher Modeling of Skills and Processes
5) Intensive Direct Instruction and Practice
6) Study of African and African American Philosophical Thought
7) Focus on Discourse, Inquiry, and Creative and Symbolic Thinking
8) Using Knowledge for Transformative Social Criticism
and Community Action
9) In-Depth Study and Performance of African
and African American Culture
Augusta Mann, copyright 2001, 2007 Intensified Accelerated Systems, Inc. www.successfulteachers.com
Of course we know SHIFT happens! We also know if we keep doing the same ol’ stuff,
we are going to keep getting the same ol’ stuff. In an effort to meet the needs of all
youngsters, we have to be adaptable to change. Change requires shift. We must rethink
schools dramatically to help students from diverse backgrounds, link to new information,
and bring the excitement of teaching and learning to a new level by using what culturally
responsive classrooms use.
SHIFT HAPPENS
Transformed Classroom!
Active student involvement
Adaptable to change
Activate prior knowledge
Alternative assessments
Bilingual
Can (ability)
Culturally relevant curriculum
Cross-age peer tutoring
Constructivist/learner centered
Cooperative
Equity
Encourage exploration and investigation
Facilitator
Focus on how are you smart (quality)
Heterogeneous groupings
Higher Order Thinking Skills
Internal motivation/discipline
Label activities
Model appropriate behavior
Prevention/Intervention
Promoting School/Home Partnerships
Process focus
Self, peer and teacher evaluations
Thematic interdisciplinary teaching
Teach children the subject
Teachers work together
Technology variety
Understanding by design
Writing fluency
Who, What, So What, Now What ...
“Educating Everybody’s Children”
Traditional classroom . . .
Passive students
Status quo
Every day a brand new day
Fill in the
and True/False
Monolingual
Can’t (dis-ability)
One size fits all
The blind leading the blind
Teacher centered
Competitive
Equality
Find the right answer
Lecturer
Focus on how smart are you (quantity)
Homogeneous groupings
Students gathering
information/memorizing
External motivation/punishment &
rewards
Label students
Don’t do as I do, do as I say do
Remediation
Notes home and quarterly meetings
Product focus
Red pen - teacher property!
Clear lines of demarcation between
subjects
Teach the subject to the children
4X4 (walls) and a door
Paper, pencil, sometimes pen
Understanding by accident
Writing correctness
Who, What, When, Where, Why and
How
All children Can Learn, but . .
The key to improving success for all children is modifying the means used, not changing
or lowering the intended results.
By: Eleanor Renee Rodriguez, Ph.D.,
Co-Author: “What Is It About Me You Can’t Teach?”
Best Practices – Reflections
What are best practices?
Why are some traditional practices not productive with culturally different
students?
What experiences have you had with the strategies found on the taxonomy?
How are the culturally responsive strategies incorporated in classes?
What do you have to do to adapt to your current student population?
What research supports the practices at your school/classes?
EXIT TICKET
As a result of today ______________________________________________________
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Next goal
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By___________________________________________________
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Name
Colleague Support
Date
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EXIT TICKET
As a result of today ______________________________________________________
______________________________________________________
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Next goal
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By___________________________________________________
Name
Colleague Support
Date
My Favorite Resources and References
Building a Culture of Literacy Month-by-Month, Hilarie Davis
Do You Know Enough About Me To Teach Me?, Stephen G. Peters
Enhancing Professional Practice: A Framework for Teaching, Charlotte Danielson
How to Differentiate Instruction in Mixed – Ability Classrooms, Carol Ann Tomlinson
Instrumental Enrichment: An Intervention Program for Cognitive Modifiability, Reuven
Feuerstein
I will not Let You Fail, Marva Collins
Multiethnic Education: Theory and Practice, James Banks
Multiple Intelligences: The Theory to Practice, Howard Gardner
Multiple Intelligences in the Classroom, Thomas Armstrong
National Blueprint for Action, National Council on Educating Black Children
On Feuerstein’s Instrumental Enrichment, A Collection, Edited by Meir Ben-Hur
Other People’s Children, Lisa Delpit
The Miseducation of the Negro, Carter G, Wilson
The Right to Learn: A Blueprint Creating Schools that Work, Linda Darling-Hammond
The Measure of Our Success, Marian Wright Edelman
Teaching Reading to Black Adolescent Males, Alfred Tate
Teaching with the Brain in Mind, Eric Jensen
Visual Tools for Constructing Knowledge, David Hyerle
What is it About Me You Can’t Teach? An Instructional Guide for the Urban Educator,
Eleanor Renee Rodriguez and James Bellanca
Winning the Future Through Education: One Step at a Time, Samuel Betances