Culture and Community in Education Module 5: Student Diversity Project

Culture and Community in Education Module 5: Student Diversity Project CONNECT Team @ Southern Methodist University Paige Ware, Brenna Rivas, Nancy Montgomery, Priscilla Blackburn, Sumei Wu, Jillian Conry, Ann Marie Wernick

Acknowledgements Creating the Project CONNECT Ongoing Network Needed to Engage Communities and Funded by Teachers Office of English Language Acquisition Grant #T365Z160106

Overview of the module: Component Tasks LEARN: Watch a video that helps to know all students Watch Ted Talk about “Unlocking the Potential of Diversity in Education” LEARN LEARN: Reading (Learning Objectives) In this module students will: Demonstrate understanding of eight Beliefs for supporting linguistically and culturally diverse learners in English education Identify ways to design/structure activities that reflect each of the eight principles, respectively Estimated Timing 3.08 minutes 13. 45 minutes 2 minutes EXPLORE: Eight Beliefs for Supporting Linguistically and Culturally Diverse EXPLORE APPLY / ASSESS Learners in English Education 25 minutes EXPLORE: Useful Links for Texas Teachers 20 minutes APPLY: Creating an Inclusive Assignment 30 minutes

LEARN: Get to know all students Watch this short video about a school-wide strategy for ensuring that all children have more than one adult at school who know them. Making Sure Each Child Is Known - YouTube

Ted Talk Sagithjan Surendra : Unlocking the potential of diversity in education TED Talk

Supporting Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Learners in English Education What goals? To provide educators with a philosophical and practical base for developing literacy classrooms that meet the needs of linguistically and culturally diverse learners How to achieve? - To illustrate eight principles and then follow with a more detailed discussion about and expansion of each principle, particularly in terms of what each means for literacy and literacy education classrooms; - To include an unpacking of the belief followed by a chart of suggestions and resources for K-12 educators and researchers. Source: Supporting Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Learners in English Education - NCTE

Eight Beliefs for Supporting Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Learners in English Education Belief 1: Respect for All Learner s Belief 2: Funds of Knowledg e Belief 3: Inquiring into Practice Belief 5: Modelin g Practice Belief 4: Variety of Education al Experienc e To be elaborated in the following slides, respectively Belief 6: Critical Users of Language Belief 7: Crossing Cultural Boundarie s Belief 8: Teaching as a Political Act Source: Supporting Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Learners in English Education - NCTE

Belief 1: Respect for All Learners We must respect all learners and themselves as individuals with culturally defined identities. To recognize the uniqueness of all cultures, languages and communities. To show understanding of the increasing cultural and linguistic diversity of our society and awareness of our own social identities and cultural biases. To consider all classrooms as multicultural, and to work towards respecting, valuing, and celebrating our own and students’ unique strengths in creating equitable classroom communities. Source: Supporting Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Learners in English Education - NCTE

Belief 1: Respect for All Learners Suggested Activities/Assignments To identify and go beyond various cultural group holidays. To develop an understanding of the history of our diverse cultural practices and rituals. for K-12 educators To investigate and complicate our commonalities and differences as participants in the local and global communities. To identify, research and share the personal histories of all individuals in the classroom; compile these stories and use as classroom resources. Source: Supporting Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Learners in English Education - NCTE

Belief 2: Funds of Knowledge Students bring funds of knowledge to their learning communities, and, recognizing this, teachers and teacher educators must incorporate this knowledge and experience into classroom practice. Rather than believe that students enter school as empty vessels to be filled with knowledge, we should believe that they bring with them rich and varied language and cultural experiences. Pervasively, these experiences remain unrecognized or undervalued as dominant mainstream discourses suppress students’ cultural capital and their rich language and literacy practices often go unnoticed in classrooms. When teachers successfully incorporate texts and pedagogical strategies that are culturally and linguistically responsive, they have been able to increase student efficacy, motivation, and academic achievement. Educators should actively acknowledge, celebrate, and incorporate these funds of knowledge into classroom practice. Educators should be provided with: spaces to learn about the communities in which they will teach; opportunities to explore and experience the contexts in which students live and form their cultural identities; opportunities to learn more about sociolinguistics which may help to avoid linguistic racism or language marginalization Source: Supporting Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Learners in English Education - NCTE

Belief 2: Funds of Knowledge Students bring funds of knowledge to their learning communities, and, recognizing this, teachers and teacher educators must incorporate this knowledge and experience into classroom practice. To develop units and classroom activities that grow out of and speak to children’s interests and cultural backgrounds. To choose texts that reflect the cultural and ethnic diversity of the nation. To encourage students to research and document life in their homes and communities. To incorporate popular culture (e.g., music, film, video, gaming, etc.) into the classroom curriculum. Source: Supporting Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Learners in English Education - NCTE

Belief 3: Inquiring into Practice Socially responsive and responsible teaching/learning requires an anthropologically and ethnographically informed teaching stance; educators must be introduced to and routinely use the tools of practitioner/teacher research in order to ask difficult questions about their practice. To empower diverse learners, educators must: - learn about and know their students in more complex ways; - become learners in their own classrooms To apply new ways of collecting and analyzing information about students and their families, and then reflecting upon the appropriateness of their curriculum and practices to be more effective educators. To use/create new lenses to interrogate the impact of one’s own teaching and planning To involve designing methods for getting ongoing feedback from students and their families and responding to that feedback Source: Supporting Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Learners in English Education - NCTE

Belief 3: Inquiring into Practice Socially responsive and responsible teaching/learning requires an anthropologically and ethnographically informed teaching stance; educators must be introduced to and routinely use the tools of practitioner/teacher research in order to ask difficult questions about their practice. To attend and participate in community meetings. To document the efforts of a student in your classroom through periodic journals. To talk to parents and To form/join a group of students to learn about their colleagues who periodically linguistic and cultural use inquiry protocols that backgrounds and facilitate looking closely at the experiences. work of students. To invite parents into the classroom to speak to all students on family life and cultural traditions, or to share an area of their expertise. Source: Supporting Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Learners in English Education - NCTE

Belief 4: Variety of Educational Experience Students have a right to a wide variety and range of high quality critical educational experiences that help them make informed decisions about their role and participation in language, literacy, and life. Learning environments and educational curricula should affirm children’s language and rich cultural identities. Learning experiences should lead students to build a deep awareness and understanding for the many forms of language, literacies and varying lifestyles that exist in their communities and in the world. Learning experiences should serve to empower students, develop their identities and voice, and encourage student agency to improve their life opportunities. Opportunities should be created for a wide range of high quality critical literacy practices to promote high student engagement and to capitalize on their multiple learning styles and diverse identities and personalities. To contextualize learning in contexts that resonate with purposeful and meaningful activities will likely touch learners’ emotional wellspring, and consequently lead to deep learning, which will make deficit views of teaching and learning unviable and untenable. Source: Supporting Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Learners in English Education - NCTE

Belief 4: Variety of Educational Experience Students have a right to a wide variety and range of high quality critical educational experiences that help them make informed decisions about their role and participation in language, literacy, and life. To investigate and critique popular culture as a voice for different cultural groups. Discuss the ways in which language is used to express feelings. Have students write their own songs or poems for posting on a website. To involve learners in reading autobiographies of children their age and then write their own stories. As a group, compare and contrast their stories with the ones they read. Discuss what students have learned about themselves and others? To ask students to examine newspaper articles, television reports, and websites about their cultural group. Do they agree/disagree with the ways the stories have been told? What is another way the stories could have been told? Write the other way. Source: Supporting Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Learners in English Education - NCTE

Belief 5: Modeling Practice Educators need to model culturally responsive and socially responsible practices for students. When English educators model culturally responsive practices, they explicitly acknowledge and incorporate students’ funds of knowledge. Modeling effective teaching practices involves building on and consciously referring to the knowledge base of said practices. The process of modeling depends on carefully planned demonstrations, experiences, and activities and during this process, educators can help students collectively examine experiences in light of their own learning, knowledge, and goals. To involve learners in discussions that not only help develop language for how or if experiences support learning, but also aid in identifying experiences that help learners examine whose English “counts” and in what contexts. Source: Supporting Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Learners in English Education - NCTE

Belief 5: Modeling Practice Educators need to model culturally responsive and socially responsible practices for students. To conduct explicit discussions: - on reading by disclosing your own reading preferences and processes; - with the intentionality to lead to a subsequent discussion on what texts students have read during their formal school careers. Who wrote these texts? Whose texts aren’t being read? Does this matter? Why is this problematic? invite students to bring in culturally relevant texts (e.g., songs, self-written poetry) and ask them to create a glossary for difficult (for the teacher) to understand language. After this experience, teacher may initiate discussion on being bi-lingual/cultural. In addition, teachers can also bring in texts relevant to the lives of students. To Source: Supporting Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Learners in English Education - NCTE

Belief 6: Critical Users of Language All students need to be taught mainstream power codes and become critical users of language while also having their home and street codes honored. According to contemporary research, native speakers know all of the rules of their native dialect (typically by the time they enter public schools at the age of five or six), and second language learners need not so much instruction, but immersion. Eventually, both groups and, indeed, all language users have a right to be informed about and practiced in the dialect of the dominant culture, also mythologized as “Standard English.” Teachers are responsible for giving all students the tools and resources to access the Language of Wider Communication, both spoken and written. However, it is not enough to just “teach” the mainstream power codes; teachers need to foster ongoing and critical examinations with their students of how particular codes came into power, why linguistic apartheid exists, and how even their own dialectical and slang patterns are often appropriated by the dominant culture. Common dilemma: how do we offer both groups ample opportunities to learn and practice their usage of this “prestige dialect” while at the same time recognizing the communicative equality and linguistic validity of their home dialects and languages? This document seeks to provide an answer, additional resources, and questions in answering that charge. Source: Supporting Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Learners in English Education - NCTE

Belief 6: Critical Users of Language All students need to be taught mainstream power codes and become critical users of language while also having their home and street codes honored. To have students compose across codes. To create dialectical and slangbased lexicons. To involve students in making dialectical translations (e.g., writing a Shakespearean soliloquy in street language or a poem written in a marginalized dialect into a privileged dialect), then discuss what gets gained and lost through such translation. To have students become ethnographers into language, recording and analyzing the ways language plays out in their lives. Source: Supporting Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Learners in English Education - NCTE

Belief 7: Crossing Cultural Boundaries Teachers and teacher educators must be willing to cross traditional, personal and professional boundaries in pursuit of social justice and equity. A gap exists between teacher diversity and student diversity that teachers should demonstrate understanding of and acknowledge racial and socioeconomic inequities that exist and that schools perpetuate. Teachers should acknowledge the limits of their personal knowledge as well as experience the privileges afforded them by virtue of their race and class and should learn to cross their personal boundaries in order to study, embrace and build understanding of “other.” When crossing boundaries, teachers should not simply have an experience with the “other,” but to use that experience to advocate for the advancement for all. For preservice teachers who are more linguistically, culturally, racially, and socioeconomically aligned with the growing diverse student population, they will have to engage in “making the strange familiar, and making the familiar strange.” Teachers should participate in projects that allow them to study their lives as a way to recognize their limits and to complement the work they will do in crossing personal boundaries such as to learn language, study culture, and visit with students and their families. Source: Supporting Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Learners in English Education - NCTE

Belief 7: Crossing Cultural Boundaries Teachers and teacher educators must be willing to cross traditional, personal and professional boundaries in pursuit of social justice and equity. To establish sustained contact with participants from diverse communities. To accomplish the projects above via audio and video tape interviewing; transcribing, studying, and compiling the stories of people from different cultures/places; collecting oral histories; all to be used as classroom resources. To develop projects on different cultural practices. To apply documentary films from PBS, etc., as a resource, designing carefully-phrased pre-post viewing questions and activities. Source: Supporting Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Learners in English Education - NCTE

Belief 8: Teaching as a Political Act Teaching is a political act, and in our preparation of future teachers and citizens, teachers and teacher educators need to be advocates for and models of social justice and equity. Teachers are believed to have the potential to function as change agents and to become social justice-oriented educators in their classrooms, schools, and communities. Social justice-oriented educators play a significant role in seeking alternative ways to address various forms of official knowledge with their students, especially forms of official knowledge that marginalize certain groups while privileging others. Effective literacy teachers of diverse students envision their classrooms as sites of struggle and transformative action in the service of academic literacy development and social change. Teachers should develop a stance toward literacy teaching that promotes critical consciousness, social justice, and equity. Teachers should participate in active reflection and reflective action in order to build and strengthen collective efforts toward individual and social transformation and through continuous efforts, they will expand relevant course materials, activities, methods, and experience in serving diverse students in the 21st century in the pursuit of equity, achievement, and justice. Source: Supporting Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Learners in English Education - NCTE

Belief 8: Teaching as a Political Act Teaching is a political act, and in our preparation of future teachers and citizens, teachers and teacher educators need to be advocates for and models of social justice and equity. To encourage students to develop critical perspectives through community-based research and action projects. To use classroom approaches that empower students socially and academically. To increase the shared knowledge base with students, parents, and other local actors; regularly tap into students’ funds of knowledge. To negotiate roles and go beyond teacher-as-expert and student-as-novice. To be explicit with students about your own positions as political agents. Source: Supporting Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Learners in English Education - NCTE

EXPLORE Useful Links for Texas Teachers English Learner Toolkit (Links to an external site.). This toolkit developed by the US Department of Education Office of English Language Acquisition is designed with school leaders and administrators in mind. It reviews a number of topics about how to enact federal policies at a school and district level, including working with families Dear Colleague Letter (Links to an external site.) (US Department of Education Office of Civil Rights and US Department of Justice): This letter outlines the history and laws pertaining to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1964 that guarantee equal access to education for students who are not yet proficient in English. Dallas ISD Translation Services (Links to an external site.). This website has contact information about the different interpretation (verbal) and translation (written documents) services available to teachers and administrators in DISD. If you teach or plan to teach in DISD, this is a great resource.

XPLORE Useful Links for Texas Teachers (continued) Office of Refugee Resettlement (Links to an external site.). This site is maintained by the governmental Office of Human and Health Services. It provides current networking information about resources for refugee families and communities. American Refugee Committee (Links to an external site.). This is a foundationrun program dedicated to creating innovative ways to help people build new lives in a country. Their core belief is described as creating a "platform for realizing the goodwill of everyday people." International Rescue Committee (Links to an external site.). This non-profit organization was founded almost 100 years ago and self-describes as "delivering lifesaving care to people fleeing conflict and natural disaster. Year after year, the IRC is one of the highest-ranking nonprofits for accountability, transparency, and efficient use of contributions."

APPLY by Creating an Inclusive Assignment Apply what you have learned about student diversity and the importance of honoring all students' backgrounds by designing an assignment that incorporates culture. You may choose any grade level, subject area, and format you prefer. (For instance, I might make a math assignment for 2nd-grade students that prompts them to choose a favorite recipe from their family's culture, write it out in English using correct fractions and units of measurement, illustrate the fractions, and paste a photo of the food.) 1. List the grade level and subject area for its intended use. 2. State the language and content objectives that will be assessed through the assignment. 3. Describe the assignment and provide clear student instructions in whatever format is relevant for you. (For instance, if you use PPT regularly, put the instructions on a slide. Likewise, if you are more likely to make physical copies or post the instruction sheet to the online platform you use to communicate with students and their families, you might prefer to make a Word doc or PDF. If you prefer to use a technology tool such as Mentimeter, Flipgrid, Panopto, or Youtube, etc., go for it!) 4. Make sure you site any resources you use (such as images).