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What is Culturally Responsive Teaching?
By Bryan Hiatt

What follows is a general definition of Culturally Responsive Teaching, derived from the generative AI called Bard by Google. I’ll be providing specific responses to the definition and bullet points below, as it relates to instruction at Frederick Community College. All AI text is treated as citable discourse, so there are quote marks and bold text for emphasis.

Bryan: What is Culturally Responsive Teaching?

AI: “Culturally responsive teaching is a teaching method that acknowledges and embraces students’ cultures, languages, and experiences, and relates them to classroom learning. It is a research-based approach that has been shown to improve student achievement, especially for students from marginalized communities” (Google Bard)

Bryan:  Okay, this is a good start. This definition fits within the framework of FCC’s goals related to diversity, equity, and inclusion.  Over the last several years,  the college has built infrastructure in creating the office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and has also created two cohorts of Equity Scholars (I participated in the second batch). Specifically, this work is about creating “ethical strategies to build and sustain an inclusive and excellent College community for students, faculty, staff, visitors, and the larger community. FCC fulfills its mission of educational excellence through culturally conscious and responsive classrooms, policies, practices, workplaces, and activities.” (FCC Diversity, Equity and Inclusion website).

I made a second query to AI, asking for more specific ways for instructors to engage in Culturally Responsive Teaching. Here are a few.

• AI: “Culturally responsive teaching helps students feel more connected to their learning. When students see themselves and their cultures reflected in the classroom, they are more likely to feel engaged and motivated to learn” (Google Bard).

Bryan: When we signal to students that their experience matters in the classroom, we’re hoping for additional buy-in.  The problem with academic writing is that it’s boring. Let’s be honest: nobody wants to do this so when we personalize the writing for our students, and give them opportunities to reflect about their experiences and what’s going on in our shared culture, then we are moving toward Culturally Responsive Teaching.

• “AI: Culturally responsive teaching helps students develop a positive sense of identity. When students learn about their cultures and histories, they gain a sense of pride and belonging. This can help them to succeed in school and in life” (Google Bard).

Bryan: One of the the toughest parts about Culturally Responsive Teaching is in the explanation to students and in the resistance you might face.  Some students are just not interested in hearing it but this doesn’t mean teachers should ignore the issues of the world that are based in race, culture, and lived experience.  It’s important that WE name them. As one of my Equity scholar friends said, “you’ve got to go there” some days. It might feel awkward and sometimes you feel like you’ve made the absolute wrong choice but it’s an important choice “to begin” making. No matter how you decide to approach this, be TOTALLY transparent with students. Let them know your goals and that as a class you will be exploring some difficult concepts and that being “uncomfortable” in the process is okay.

• AI: “Culturally responsive teaching helps students develop critical thinking skills. culturally responsive teaching encourages students to question the status quo and to think about how their own cultures and experiences shape their perspectives. This can help them to become more active citizens and to make a difference in the world” (Google Bard).

Bryan: This one provides some challenges for instructors who are of the opinion that academic writing should be completely objective and exclude all subjective elements.  If we agree that giving students the opportunity to reflect upon their experiences is important, then we’ve taken the first step in Culturally Responsive Teaching. These two perspectives can be mixed successfully.

• AI: “Culturally responsive teaching helps teachers become more effective educators. culturally responsive teaching requires teachers to be aware of their own cultural biases and to be intentional about creating a classroom that is welcoming and inclusive for all students. This can help teachers to become better at reaching all of their students and providing them with the best possible education.”

Bryan: The intentional part is what I want to highlight with this response.  I’m not advocating for instructors to fully overhaul their courses in terms of Culturally Responsive Teaching.  The English Department is advocating for more active self-reflection among faculty and to consider making and incremental changes outlined by the department. The first steps for most instructors will be rethinking their syllabus, as a more inviting and welcoming space for students and their first impression of our courses. Does it signal openness? Flexibility? Our willingness to work with them when things get hard?

• AI: “Use culturally relevant literature. There are many great books that feature characters from diverse cultures. Reading these books can help students to see themselves and their cultures reflected in the classroom” (Google Bard).

Bryan: This one comes with the most work, to be honest. When we change readings in class we’re also talking about associated work in revision to lesson plans, essays instructions, quizzes and exams. But the truth here is that teachers often resist change for selfish reasons (working from the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mentality).  One strategy to combat this issue is to think about changing one reading per term that could benefit your students.  In other words, don’t think about remaking an entire course but making changes incrementally.  This way you’re moving toward the goal of having culturally relevant content at work in your class.

• AI: “Incorporate student experiences into lessons. Ask students to share stories about their families, their communities, and their cultures. This can help them to connect their learning to their own lives” (Google Bard).

Bryan: This has been perhaps the most rewarding aspect of my ENGL101/2 in recent years.  I’ve changed to broader subject matter that is culturally relevant in the moment but also found ways to also focus on issues related to family conflict, social media use, or the tricky question of identity (this is where many students are in 2022-23).  What I also do in these assignments is to ask students to use their classmates as a source.  In this way students are offering up their experiences within class discussions, then posting their collected thoughts in a discussion board soon after.  Later in the writing process, students revisit the discussion board to find their student source for a journal or an essay. What this does is take parts of writing away from the so-called experts (the boring parts…) and give some of it back to the experience of students, which is much more interesting. If we are serious about asking students to reflect on their cultures and lived experiences in their writing, then we have to provide space for it. This also signals to students that they are writing for a broader audience, where their thoughts and experiences stand next to academic writing.

• AI: “Use culturally appropriate teaching strategies. There are many different teaching strategies that can be used in a culturally responsive classroom. Some examples include cooperative learning, project-based learning, and service learning” (Google Bard).

Bryan: This one asks teachers to take a step back and think less about what it means to be up front and more about what it means to distribute the learning into groups.  For teachers this is a process of letting go a little bit but it’s also about creating opportunities for students to work together, to be collaborative with some parts of an assignment,  and let them teach each other.  While we all understand the issues related to group work, this doesn’t mean that we should avoid it; rather we should figure out ways to make it more a part of our overall learning goals in the class.

• AI: “Be aware of your own cultural biases. It is important for teachers to be aware of their own cultural biases and how they might impact their teaching. This can help them to create a more inclusive classroom environment” (Google Bard).

Bryan: This can potentially be an uncomfortable part of Culturally Responsive Teaching.  As an Equity Scholar, we were prompted to examine aspects of our life that we bring to the classroom that might impact students, perhaps in ways we did not intend. I thought about what it meant to be a young student, growing up in a home that was food insecure, and always strapped for cash due to a whole lot of bad luck when it came to jobs for my parents. I don’t how they fed the seven of us, stayed together, and always made sure their kids were supported with whatever they could give. But as I grew older, I didn’t want to think about this, especially as it related to my classes. I just wanted my students to do the work and I grew tired of hearing excuses when they did not do it. This bit of self-reflection is easy to play forward and ask: “how would I, as a poor hungry kid, want to treated in a college classroom?” The simple answer is with empathy! There is room within the college classroom to give students “space” to complete work beyond deadline. As teachers, we need to focus on the content we are assessing…not the behavior of students, who might be late on an assignment (within a reasonable time frame).

Professionally, I began looking at reading lists for ENGL102. What did I see? Old dead white guys. I came to the conclusion that it’s important to recognize the canon, but also to embrace different voices within the anthology I’m using. My point? I was choosing what I knew and was comfortable with, not what could be culturally relevant to students.

The second place I looked was grade distributions over a 5-year period by ethnicity, and I began to understand how traditional grading systems tend to privilege groups of students over other students, and how teachers tend to categorize them (the “go getter,” “the athlete,” “the student who always has an excuse,” “the over-achiever,” “the under-achiever,” “the student who always participates,” “the student who never participates,” “the student who is never in class or always late”). Taking the categories broadly and thinking about meeting new students, some days teachers make these judgments too quickly, and can create some harm in the learning process for students later on. I’m no different in this regard. Taking the next step and connecting ethnicity to the categories, the results were surprising and disappointing to me personally, where I recognized an unconscious (implicit) bias at work.  So I made a change to contract grading, where a grade of “B” is present until it is lost due to missed work or other factors defined in the syllabus. This is a system that allows students the space they might need when “life throws them a curveball” and is also removes the teacher somewhat from creating categories.

Finally, in a department work group surrounding the English department website, we landed on these AI generated points surrounding an “English department philosophy.” As a larger group, we’ve yet to discuss the ordering (though we think bullet 1 is a big deal), or the other inclusion/exclusion of ideas, but we agreed that the list provides a useful starting point that supports the broad idea of Culturally Responsive Teaching. If an instructor follows these five bullet points, then they have taken important first steps in becoming a culturally responsive instructor.

• Foster Creativity and Imagination.
• Foster Critical Thinking and Analytical Skills.
• Cultivate Effective Communication Skills.
• Promote Cultural and Global Awareness.
• Enhance Research and Information Literacy Skills.