A Humanizing Approach
Educators work to create learning environments that are safe, engaging, supportive, and joyful for the students they serve. These same educators use a variety of technological tools, learning management systems, social emotional learning techniques, and a host of pedagogical strategies in pursuit of engaging learners and helping them to develop the foundational skills needed to be successful.
What I have learned over the years is that no matter what tool or strategy you use, if you do not center a students' humanity in the learning environment it will be difficult to?authentically engage them.
A teaching method I have found to be helpful in creating a safe, engaging, supportive, and joyful learning environment is culturally responsive teaching. The concept of culturally responsive teaching has been explored for many years. Scholars like Gloria Ladson-Billings, Geneva Gay, Lisa Delpit, Yvette Jackson, Zaretta Hammond, Asa G. Hillard, and many others have dedicated their life’s work to offering educators a pathway to engaging students in a more authentic manner while acknowledging and celebrating who they are and the gifts they bring to the classroom.
Their scholarship explores educators capacity to generate excitement and learning in the classroom and how it is deeply affected by our interest in one another, hearing one another’s voices, and recognizing one another’s presence and brilliance.?
These scholars help us to understand that the values of collectivism, selflessness, and trust are required to create learning environments that humanize students regardless of their skin color or cultural background. Their work explores the connection of culturally responsive practices and cognitive science.
Dr. Hammond and Dr. Jackson highlight the importance of understanding how the brain uses culture to make sense of the world. These scholars offer to us that if we want to use culturally responsive teaching to support the cognitive development of independent learners, we have to know how the brain uses culture to make sense of the world.?
As a child, I had the privilege of being in learning environments where the educators I encountered created opportunities for me to experience academic success, understand who I am, and learn about those around me.? Additionally, these educators pushed me to think critically about the concepts I was learning. I have joyful memories of my K-12 experience and have a love for learning to this day. I am confident that the culturally responsive learning environments I experienced as a child contributed to the positive core memories I have about school.
Dr. Ladson-Billings organizes this humanizing method into three criteria. In culturally responsive learning environments students must:
The criteria of academic success acknowledges that any culturally responsive lesson will include an opportunity for a student to demonstrate mastery of a skill or standard. Often in educational settings, educators believe that relationships alone will improve student academic outcomes.
What we have learned is that culturally responsive teaching requires that educators attend to students’ academic needs by ensuring they have access to grade level standards, understand their potential and brilliance, and create environments where they are celebrated, not merely tolerated.
When these criteria are met, students strive for academic excellence because of their engagement, joy, and desire to deepen their learning. Scholars in the area of culturally responsive teaching have suggested that culturally responsive educators utilize students' culture as a vehicle for learning and that the learning experience must include more than cognitive performances and achievement outcomes.?
At a time in our nation's history where it seems like we are constantly faced with social, political, and humanitarian challenges, culturally responsive learning environments create a pathway to a stronger and more sustainable democracy.
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Unfortunately, in many educational settings the concepts of cultural competence and critical consciousness become challenging as there is so much pressure on educators to improve standardized assessment scores.
Dr. Christopher Emdin suggests that to be an educator in America today means that your students’ test scores, GPAs, and graduation rates are the primary measures of your effectiveness. As a result, many educators believe that anything aside from teaching to the test will be detrimental.
At a time in our nation’s history where we have the lower numbers of undergraduates going into the profession of education, we must create learning environments that not only engage, energize, and inspire students, but also engage, energize, and inspire educators as well.
Increased realness, relevance, rigor ,and relationship in the classroom not only benefit students, educators benefit as well.?As educators we must first recognize our humanity and understand the brilliance and gifts we bring to the learning environment.? From there we can more easily access and center our students' humanity to create safe, engaging, supportive, and joyful learning environments.
Delpit, L. D. (1995). Other people's children: Cultural conflict in the classroom. New Press.
Emdin, C. (2016). For white folks who teach in the hood…and the rest of y’all too. Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon Press.
Gay, G. (2000). Culturally responsive teaching: Theory, research, and practice. New York: Teachers College Press.
Hammond, Z., & Jackson, Y. (2015). Culturally responsive teaching and the brain: Promoting authentic engagement and rigor among culturally and linguistically diverse students. Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin, a SAGE Company.
Hilliard, A.G., III. (1995, November). Teacher education from an African American perspective. Invitational Conference on Defining the Knowledge Base for Urban Teacher Education, Atlanta, GA.
Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). But that’s just good teaching! The case of culturally relevant pedagogy. Theory into Practice, 34(2), 159-165.
Ladson-Billings, G. (2021). Culturally relevant pedagogy: Asking a different question. New York: Teachers College Press.
Chief Executive Officer at American Indian Cancer Foundation
4 个月I completely agree, thank you for sharing this with us.