Culturally relevant teaching was described by Ladson-Billings (1992) as a “kind of teaching that is designed not merely to fit the school culture to the students’ culture but also to use student culture as the basis for helping students understand themselves and others, structure social interactions, and conceptualize knowledge.” (p. 314) This pedagogy involves teachers building a bridge from students' experience at home to their experience in the classroom, bringing familiar elements into their daily learning at school which further reinforce each student's culture. 

 

Principles of culturally relevant teaching

 

Ladson-Billings contends that culturally relevant pedagogy has three criteria:

• Students must experience academic success.

• Students must develop and/or maintain cultural competence.

• Students must develop a critical consciousness.

 

My objective as a teacher is to motive my students to develop their own learning interests and critical thinking. By learning about my students’ background, I am able to differentiate instruction to meet their learning needs and gain a better understanding of how individuals will interact with one another. Beyond just learning about our students and helping them build confidence in learning, choosing appropriate texts also plays critical part in my teaching. Thomas (2011) writes about the value of incorporating less conventional school texts that students are more familiar with to teach various concepts within literacy. Using the texts related to students’ background and current events, they would become more engaging.

 

The dimensions of identity are complex and far-ranging. They might include ethnicity, gender, race, talents, languages, aspirations, beliefs, spiritual beliefs, socio-economic situation, degree of self-awareness, passions and interests. All these factors help form the unique person in the classroom. Through feedback and conversation about different aspects of students’ lives, I am able to make relevant and authentic connections to students' learning.

 

During my student placement, I constantly think about how I can help students feel proud of their identity and relate to others in different ways. As we started our reading unit on interpreting characters, I chose the picture book My Chinatown to model reading fluency and address various reading strategies. I immediately felt in love with that book as I read at the first time because I am just like the author who grew up in a place with two cultures, one existing within the other. I can completely relate to the text. 

 

As I read the text aloud, I used prompts to help students make prediction and analyze characters. I had students share their understanding of their definition of culture and raise questions about their own. I also had students to work with partners on comparing and contrasting other cultures with their own culture during the independent reading time. I carefully chose these activities that were both significant and challenging for them so that they were stimulated to think beyond their comfort zone and felt involved in their own personal learning process.

 

I also integrated this cultural theme in other content areas. For example, before I started my Math unit, Multiplicative Comparisons, I posed these questions to the class, "Food plays such a big part in our life, but how much do you know about food? Well, I am so curious to find out what cuisine you, your family and friends like to have. What is the most popular cuisine? Mathematician, can you find two cuisines of your choice and start exploring and let me know how many people like the first cuisine you picked and how many people like the second one? For our homework tonight, you will interview 10 people, use the data you collected and write a comparison statement." As I introduced the new unit on the next day, students were very engaging and excited to share their responses. Throughout this investigation process, I am not only acting as a facilitator to help my students gain understanding of their cultures, but also positioning myself as a learner alongside my students and challenging my own learning. 

 

By participating in this cultural unit under within the culturally relevant framework, students will better understand another reason why each person is unique and special in his or her own way. It is becoming clear that in order to build communities that are successful at improving conditions and resolving problems, we need to understand and appreciate many cultures, establish relationships with people from cultures other than our own, and build strong alliances with different cultural groups.