1.07 Being a Culturally Responsible Teacher
Understand the basic idea of Culturally Responsive Teaching and why teachers should look beyond surface-level judgments of students.
What Is Culturally Responsive Teaching?
To help you in this journey of being a champion for your students, LIA uses a Culturally Responsive Teaching approach in the classroom.
Culturally Responsive Teaching recognizes the importance of including students' cultural references in all aspects of learning.
The purpose of this lesson is to introduce one of the fundamental concepts of Culturally Responsive Teaching: developing meaningful and strong relationships with your students.
Looking Beyond the Surface
Sometimes, what we see at first does not tell the full story. The original training uses a truck accident near Hurricane, Utah as an example.
At first, the image appears to show a truck that simply crashed through a barrier. However, when you see the full picture, you realize how close the driver came to a much more serious outcome.
The lesson is that judgments based only on surface-level perspectives are not always accurate. This same idea applies to how we view and understand our students.
Surface-level perspectives do not always show the full story.
Connecting This Idea to Students
Being an effective Culturally Responsive Teacher requires us to pay attention to the way we judge and view others, especially our students.
A student's behavior, appearance, confidence level, language, grades, or participation may only show a small part of who they are. LIA teachers work to understand the deeper story behind each student.
Think of a time when you misjudged someone or when someone misjudged you. How can that experience help you look beyond surface-level assumptions with your students?