Culturally Responsive Teaching
“A good lesson is like a story well told.”
Just like any story, our lessons must have a protagonist—or “protagonists,” I should say. You guessed it! I am talking about our students. What better way to make our lessons interesting and relevant to our students than by incorporating elements about their culture and identity into our teaching?
Throughout any lesson—yes, outside of Literacy, as well—there are so many opportunities to incorporate aspects of our students’ cultures making our lessons more meaningful to our students. Some of those opportunities include, but are not limited to, the visuals we show (whose faces are we displaying?), the quotes we put up in our classrooms (consider including all of your students’ native languages), the videos we play and the perspectives of historical events we include (whose voices are being heard in our classrooms?), the picture books we read (are all your students able to identify themselves in the stories you read and in the characters they see?), and so on.
In the time I student-taught in a first- and a fifth-grade classroom, I made sure to be intentional about those very important aspects of my teaching. I remember I used picture books that were culturally relevant to my specific group of students so that they would be able to identify with its content and illustrations. Some of those picture books were “Dragones y tacos” written by Adam Rubin and illustrated by Daniel Salmieri; “¡Di algo!” by Peter H. Reynolds; and “El día en que descubres quién eres” written by Jacqueline Woodson and illustrated by Rafael López.
Additionally, when creating GLAD boards to illustrate new vocabulary for both my English and Spanish Language Learners, I was very intentional about including pictures of people from different backgrounds and ethnicities providing all my students with equal opportunities to feel represented and identified.
You probably already know I am originally from Peru, and as you can imagine, we speak a different dialect of Spanish. Throughout my lessons, I showed my students different ways to name things. For example, I made sure my students learned that in Peru we call “shoelaces” pasadores, but in other Spanish-speaking countries, people call them cintas or agujetas. I also created opportunities for some of my students, whose families came from other Spanish-speaking countries, to share even more ways to name the same things. I have had students from Cuban, Mexican and Colombian backgrounds share new vocabulary. I even encouraged students from Brazil and the Philippines to share Portuguese and Tagalog words given that these languages share a lot of similar words with Spanish.
Going back to the picture book I mentioned earlier, “Dragones y tacos,” I should say that I actually used this picture book during a math lesson. I was teaching a lesson on how to solve word problems using addition and subtraction in a first-grade classroom. I used the picture book as both a hook to get my students’ attention and as a way to get the class ready to pay attention to the words of the story—a skill they would need to use in order to identify whether they would need to add or subtract to solve words problems. Additionally, I knew that my first graders had met the author Adam Rubin during a school event the previous year. My students loved imaginary creatures, such as dragons, and they were all very familiar with tacos—I have yet to find a person who hasn’t eaten a taco in Southern California. I read the book up until the part where the main character is getting ready for a taco party for dragons and lists the ingredients he will need. I created word problems about organizing the taco party for dragons, and I also made sure to include my students’ names.
That lesson was a success. By incorporating a fun picture book into a math lesson, I was able to capture my students’ interest and attention from the very beginning of the lesson. I also made the lesson relevant to my students by using a story that included aspects of their culture. As a result, my students remained engaged the entire time, they had fun while learning math, and reached the academic goal we had established for that lesson.
Our lessons should be like stories well-told. And our students must be the protagonists of said stories. It really does go a long way!
