Applying the concepts to your context

There’s a lot of challenges that come with culturally responsive teaching. One, I think the biggest challenge is I think that nobody wants to get it wrong, right? Nobody wants to be the person who’s doing the wrong thing, harming their students, creating adversarial relationships. So I think that’s a challenge, one of the first challenges.

I think one of the second challenges is knowing where to start. Do I start when I learn something and implement it immediately, do I start in the beginning of the semester? And also, how do you start? Do you start by listening to something like this? Do you start by listening to your peers? Do you start by watching something on YouTube?

And then lastly, you know, the third challenge is that a lot of people are solitary in this mission. I think a lot of people on kind of islands and in big universities it may only be two or three people who really want culturally responsive teaching, understand it, have even looked at it or talked about it. And so those are some big challenges.

So the question is, is what can we do about it? Well one thing is, again, to overcome the challenge of not knowing where to start and really kind of not getting it wrong, is just start small and think big. Any change is a good change if it’s the right change. And so really kind of understanding that no matter who you are or where you come from or where you’re living, that whatever your cultural lens is may not be that of the person that you’re teaching. And just understanding that anything and everything is on the table when it comes to connecting with our students and culture is just such an easy way that people can reciprocate learning and teaching back and forth. So that’s the first thing I say is really start small and think big.

Secondly, really this network itself the whole point is just to kind of bring people together and see what other people are doing. And so, you know, do that. Pair up with partners, go outside the university, gain your support. Because I think that’s where a lot of people can ask the questions that they may not be comfortable asking their peers, or maybe within the institution and having those important conversations. And I think COVID taught us that, right? Is that, you know, we’ve met so many new people and seen so many new faces just because people are reaching out. So definitely do that as well.

And again, lastly, talk to your students. Have your students teach you something, learn something. Again with that culturally responsive lecture launch question that I posed earlier. That’s a great example. And once you read through that, it tells you so much more. I know I was just doing a training session a couple weeks ago, and we were talking about that exact activity. And one of the professors in that said, “We had so much more robust conversation online because of that one small change.” And she said, “I could not stop reading what my students were posting, because it was just so in depth.”

It was about their families and about what they thought and about how they moved places. And it just made such a difference. And it was information that she said she wouldn’t have otherwise. And so really just kind of taking it small and saying maybe this is the one area in my course that I’m willing to kinda dip my toe in and start. And my goal is always to give things that are tangible, that don’t require department changes and finance and all this kind of stuff, it’s just a small change that can make a huge difference.