Cultural Responsiveness (Power Pedagogy)

Introductory Biography: Ashley York is a graduate student at Michigan State University. She has been teaching for five years and is currently teaching kindergarten. Starting out she was the Director and Leader Teacher for the Michigan School Readiness Preschool program in Hillsdale Michigan.

Blog Entry:
The chapter on cultural responsiveness struck me as the easiest to relate to as a teacher seeking to develop the whole child. I agree that as a responsive educator, one cannot simply sprinkle ethnic content around the curriculum without contextualizing it. As expressed, “Decontextualizing teaching and learning from the ethnicities and cultures of students minimizes the chances that their achievement will ever be fully realized” (p. 23). To continue, in doing so, one is supporting students in their failure as they gain negative self-efficacy. Because I teach in a rural area made up of mostly white families, I have not had the opportunity to be concerned with cultural responsiveness. I have taught one African American girl and one Asian girl, both who were adopted into white middle-class families. However, after reading the other articles, I felt that if I had to pick an educator from one of the pedagogues for my own child, I would pick one of cultural responsiveness pedagogy.
To provide an example of cultural responsiveness in my own classroom with little opportunity to actually do so, I could only relate it to our different levels of economic status at first. The students that come from low economic status (more than 60%) were often seen as what I would equate to the negative views often attributed to African American boys. These children were easily labeled with the stigma that it was “their fault.” I equated this to the “deficit syndrome” as I read in the section From Can’t To Can (p. 23). Regardless of the parts that create the whole of this pedagogy, empowering each student is the goal.
As a kindergarten teacher having two minority children in my classroom I thought I was doing a service for my two culturally diverse students I had last year to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. and Chinese New Year. After reading this week, I realized that providing my students with a mere chunk of knowledge outside of context is not going to provide them with a global view of cultural groups within the United States. I agree with Aragon (1973) that professionals are “culturally deprived” (Gay, 28). As teachers move toward becoming accomplished educators in identifying ideology they must incorporate that into formation of responsive multicultural curriculum. Not only are educators struggling to understand the individuality with one classroom, I find that many do not understand themselves. This is the situation I find myself in. Many educators expect to educate with various cultures in mind, however, without knowing your own culture and it’s depth and value it is difficult to think in those terms. A teacher who is concerned with cultural responsiveness will enhance each child’s view and knowledge of the world’s cultures without creating stereotypes, the realization of its importance has become a harsh reality. Because mandated standards are significant in number and our own education was less than sufficient, one might find it difficult to recognize how cultural representation can be transformed into a curriculum dominated by Western/Anglo Saxon Heritage.
Student achievement is the ultimate goal. To understand the student and the culture within will allow for new teaching strategies that will engage, motivate, and value students. Capitalizing on student diversity has proven to increase test scores, and overall student achievement. However, we cannot only look at student achievement as measured by a system of grades or ranking. Student achievement is likened to society. Society at large will only be as successful as the players creating and maintaining it. Student achievement begins with the student. To be culturally responsive, it is the educator’s job to entertain every child’s identity as similar or different as it may be from “mainstream” society. Unfortunately, many of the players creating our society are slanting the rules of how society works without realizing it. We suffer from “cultural blindness” (p. 21).So, take the pressure of the student. The student should be the primary means to understanding how we are changing to a more globalized world. The pressure belongs on us, the educators. Continuing to follow the same pattern by sticking to a rigid set of rules of what society is, does not allow for student achievement, nor does it allow for students to contribute positively or intellectually to a world that requires one to be open-minded and prepared for discourse concerning “truths.”When educators see themselves as unique in this vast society and understand the vast differences they bring to the game too, we will be on the right track to a culturally responsive classroom. Until then, students will continue to come into the game, be groomed for the way we play, and be expected to leave knowing what is the so-called truth without understanding why or how and lacking the tools to question the rules. Contextualizing student culture into and within the curriculum will show students how to be open-minded, question, analyze, and dig deep for the truth. Capitalizing on student culture is the catalyst to a positive shift in or world today.

Introductory Biography: Amber Miller is a graduate student currently completing a Masters of Art in Education. She is currently teaching 2nd grade in the district of Battle Creek Public Schools, where she also completed her entire K-12 educational experience.

Blog Entry:
When reading the article on cultural pedagogy by Gay I couldn’t help but ask myself the question: what is culture? The article went through lengths to develop the idea that more cultural responsiveness is needed in teaching, and essentially many classroom teachers and building staff our blinded by their own cultures that they cannot see through into the culture of their students. But though I’ve heard the theory time and time again, after reading the article I found myself really exploring the idea of what is culture? According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, culture is defined as, "the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group.” In essence it is the music we listen to, the food we partake in, the arts that we delve into, and the literature that we give life to. In essence culture is our customs. It is what we deem to be important and because culture is manufactured in our own minds culture is learned. It has nothing to do with the genetic DNA which is manufactured in us when we are created. But all the more what we learn to partake in, what is passed down to us.
Often I go back to the era of segregation in the United States. I find myself going back to separate but equal elementary schools, Brown VS. Board, Jim Crow laws, etc, and I find that the culture which existed at that time period manufactured the superiority of white over black. Not only did they manufacture that vision of power, but they also passed it down to their children, and their children passed it down to their children. It wasn’t something that occurred from the day civilization was implanted on the earth. After all Africans were thriving in production before the slave trade. However, it occurred from a thought that one group was inferior to another group, that slavery could make money, and that segregation could continue to instill the notion that black was lower than white. It was something that was a custom, something that was learned. So because we have a hard time recognizing the influence that one group of individuals have on us we are deemed to repeat that same transference of knowledge to our children and students.
That thought leads me to the idea that if culture is learned then there is no one culture that defines us, no one set of ideals which can be proven "more right" or "more wrong. It also lends knowledge to the educational realm, in that if culture is learned, then the culture that classroom teachers bring into the classroom does not have superiority over the culture that the students bring into the classroom. Gay says teaching, "Is most effective when ecological factors, such as prior experiences, community settings, cultural backgrounds, and ethnic identities of teachers and students are included in its implementation" (Gay, 21). So the question that lingers in my mind is why do we let culture define who we are, what we teach, what we believe, as if that’s the only way it has to be? In order for schools to encourage more critical learning all opinions, views, ideals have to be more readily available to ALL students and we have to raise these questions in our classrooms. We must critically question, modeling that to our students, so that we can transform our thinking as well as theirs (Gay, 37).
After reading Ashley York's blog I found that culture was not just defined by food, language, or community, but it was also defined by family structure, and prior experiences. In celebrating two wonderful holidays she gave her students a tiny piece of the puzzle that they were missing. As February is approaching I find that many schools try and condense African American History month or Chicano history month in a few days. I myself have done it. Though it’s nice and it invites children into those areas in which they have not frequently explored, in a way it’s like giving them half a peanut butter and jelly sand which. Without the jelly the peanut butter just doesn’t taste half as good, nor does it give them the whole experience that they should be able to enjoy. Last year I taught in a highly suburban well off school district and as a student teacher I was given the opportunity to present lessons to my students. Most of the teachers tried to give a few lessons on MLK, Jackie Robinson, Madame C.J. Walker and call it a day, but yet they missed the mark. We must do more to integrate diverse cultures into our classrooms. In addition, often we assume that just because a community is homogeneously white that they have the same culture, but I don’t think that is the case all of the time. Of course there will be a a lot of similar values, beliefs, and interest, but culture also encompasses language, food, arts, etc. As a group we have discussed the idea that if we are going to be culturally sensitive we can’t just choose specific months to isolate our teaching of minority groups. We have to go beyond that, and one way we can do that is to introduce them to diversely rich literature so that they can gain those experiences, even when we ourselves, as teachers, do not have them. I have found that picture books work wonders in showcasing minority accomplishments and ways of life, as well as sharing with the world their life stories.

Introductory Biography: Linsha Li is a graduate student at Michigan State University. She has been teaching for 2 years and is currently teaching Chinese in a K-5 elementary building as well as an 7th and 8th middle school building

Blog Entry:
I totally agree with you about how important different culture could be, and I think I am a little special, since I am not American and I am living in a different culture and what I am doing is teaching Chinese which is teaching a another different culture. In my classes, I have students from different backgrounds. I have students who are African Americans, Americans, Asians and other ethnical groups. It is like teaching in the United Nations and sometimes it is so amazing when you see different people are learning another brand-new culture and they input their own ideas and listen to each other, learn from each other. In my teaching, I often take myself as an example to explain a different culture. I share with them what I think about American culture when I really lived here and hear what they think about Chinese culture that I really enjoy doing. I really enjoyed reading your posts here and I asked the same question to myself what Amber brought up which is “what culture really is?” I do agree with what she said about culture is actually your customs and the food we eat, the music we listen to, the language we speak, even the way we think and the way we do things. and most importantly I think culture is our identity. It is something we inherited from our ancestors and the way how people outside look at us sometimes.I remember every year I have a new class, students would ask me “can you teach us how to do Chinese Kungfu?” and I always say”I don’t know how to do it” and they would be very disappointed and surprised, saying “how come you don’t know? you are Chinese.” and I say "I am Chinese, but not every Chinese knows how to do it.” One time when I went to a restaurant, there was an American girl who came to me and said, "oh, you are not MULAN”. (MULAN is a Chinese girl cartoon role in a Disney cartoon.) What my point here is this is our culture, our identity and the way how people see us as Chinese.
And also I would like to talk about as a Chinese teacher in America, how can I engage students, teach a second language by using cultural responsive pedagogy. First, I naturally implant some Chinese classroom routines in my class. By doing this, students can vividly feel the culture. For example, in China, at the beginning of every class, students would stand up, greet with the teacher and bow to the teacher that is definitely not an American style but my students now they do it and take it as a very interesting culture. Second, since I have students from different culture, when one student ask me some controversial question, like “how come in your country some people eat cat and dog?” No need me to answer it, some students from other nations would explain in every culture there is something you don’t accept, just like in your country, people eat hamburger, pizza, sandwiches every day but we don’t.” I think with these conversations going on, students gradually understand cultures are different and they are not always different in a positive way, like Kungfu, like Jackie Chen. Sometimes they may be different in a unpleasant way.No culture is exceptional. That is what we need to accept and learn. Third, I think as a language teacher, I paid more attention to different cultures. Sometimes I initiate the conversation and encourage them to have the argument of the difference. But sometimes I just avoid some sensitive topics in case they get hurt. Sometimes it is really hard to be balance but we all learn it with time and experience.