Summary Of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy By Gloria Ladson-Billing
If you were to ask a teacher why they chose their profession, you should not be surprised to hear them say they felt called to educate the next generation. As honorable as this calling may be, it comes with great responsibility. Teachers can become overwhelmed, feeling like the weight of the world and its future rests on their shoulders. They cannot be like parents who can choose to limit their focus on investing in their own children. A teacher’s influence can be limited to their school, their classroom, and their students. However, their profession has a lasting impression when considering how much maturing and human development occurs during those early years of most American’s life. Another bit of common knowledge is that teachers usually
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are not paid an appropriate amount for all their job requires them. Teachers enter into a career where they are challenged by the socioeconomic forces and education policies that tend to correlate too strongly with student performance, they fear job security due to poor attitudes toward teachers which are followed by rigorous evaluations, and they feel unprepared and unempowered to cultivate culturally diverse classroom environments that appeal to student interests. Although teachers face many challenges, that does not mean they cannot defy things that are out of their control, such as the economic and political state of the school and surrounding area they function within.
Teachers struggle to combat economic forces and school practices that are outside their influence. Teachers do not draft their students. They show up that first day of school taking responsibility for what and who has been given to them. If teachers could choose their students, they would be able to reap the benefits of diversity that Amy Wells proposed by practicing things like supporting and sustaining diverse districts and communities, fostering cross-district cooperation/collaboration, and encouraging inter-district transfers (2014, pp. 22-23). In short, teachers cannot be blamed for consistent poverty (Denby, 2016). However, there are several ways for a teacher to have an impact on the environment beyond the classroom, such as collaborating with faculty members and working with parents by communicating with them. In addition, teachers strive to work on improving their instructional method, but spend too much energy on keeping records for legal purposes, hosting conferences to explain things to misunderstanding parents, holding staff meetings to explain to staff how the school operates, monitoring what the police should monitor, etc. (Haberman, 1991). Schools also limit their teachers by emphasizing technology use and standards instead of cultural differences and alternative perspectives (Greene, 1997), and then abandon things like the arts, gym, and recess (Denby, 2016; Cody, 2014). Moreover, teachers are made to do a lot with a little when funding is lacking (Jones, 2013), but unfortunately, this leads to burning out and feeling defeated, unable then to be motivated to fight the downfalls of the educational system.
Teachers fear job security, and focus more on saving themselves more than saving their students from the economic oppression that makes the teacher look bad. “Moral panic” is the tendency, that when there is an economic or social crisis, to lay blame on public school teachers (Denby, 2016). The problem here is that a current issue does not represent what current teachers are doing, unless they have been doing the same thing for a long time. However, something that has been going on in American schools for a long time is standardized testing, which the teachers do not have the option as to whether or not their students take them. Unfortunately, standardized tests measure demographics more than a teacher’s ability to teach (Denby, 2016; Lucas & Beresford, 2010; Jones, 2013). Furthermore, teaching to the test creates a culture of fitting into a mold rather than having teaching methods that fit to the student (Haberman, 1991). I think this malpractice, in my personal experience, has constructed an inevitable identity crisis where students in secondary education model their identity after others, finding what they have in common more beneficial than understanding than how they are different. James A. Baldwin argued “education is by society, for society,” but the problem is that students are not encouraged to ask questions about the universe and explore who they are as an individual because society wants obedient, like minded citizens (2008). Teachers lose sight of fostering an environment of individuality when standardized testing prefers to make the conventional student successful.
Teachers are unprepared to teach to the needs of the students by blending their cultural differences and personal interests into the curriculum.
Gloria Ladson-Billings’s monumental work on culturally relevant pedagogy has inspired many educators to strive to appeal to the diversity of their students. Culturally relevant pedagogy is “a theoretical model that [...] helps students to accept and affirm their cultural identity while developing critical perspectives that challenge inequities that schools (and other institutions) perpetuate” (Ladson-Billings, 1995, p. 469). However, if culture is taught, it tends to be taught like an ancient history class, where the culture has been long displaced from our modern perceptions. Only the best history teachers will link the history to the present in truly profound and meaningful ways. Django Paris accurately criticizes the view that teaching a culture belonging to poverty should not be taught in a “progressive” America (2012, p. 93). Teaching about the interests of a student is beneficial for them and using other cultures can spike their curiosity so that white students will want to investigate the topic. Paris furthers Ladson-Billings’s point about culture in classroom, in that it cannot simply be relevant to a specific moment in time, but it must be sustained over time. He suggests culturally responsive instruction: “Teaching and learning that seeks to perpetuate and foster linguistic, literate, and cultural pluralisms as part of the democratic project of schooling and as a necessary response to demographic and social change” (Ferlazzo & Paris, 2017). In practice, culturally responsive instruction has students return the favor to the teacher when the lesson values they
themselves. Culturalism is the concept that a cultural framework is in place in society where people have predetermined limitations of how they can live, and they can only operate within their particular framework. Within the field of academia, teacher’s are challenged by the individual’s socioeconomic status and the educational policies that hinder their scholastic career. Criticisms are the negative forces against teachers that do more to point out the issues without offering up solutions. In turn, teachers do more to save themselves, feeling as if their career is at risk as opposed to the focusing on how to better educate their students and save those who are at risk in the academic sense. Connectivity, or the lack thereof, represents the student’s need to feel connected to instruction and interconnected within their school. A lack of connectivity occurs when teachers struggle to construct lessons relevant to a student’s life beyond the classroom walls. Due to the brevity of this paper, I frustratingly leave you with more reasons to be disappointed in the education system than with solutions to the challenges teachers face. However, in recognizing these challenges, know that they are challenges that can be overcome and not absolute barriers that keep teachers from being a silver lining in a gloomy situation.
are not paid an appropriate amount for all their job requires them. Teachers enter into a career where they are challenged by the socioeconomic forces and education policies that tend to correlate too strongly with student performance, they fear job security due to poor attitudes toward teachers which are followed by rigorous evaluations, and they feel unprepared and unempowered to cultivate culturally diverse classroom environments that appeal to student interests. Although teachers face many challenges, that does not mean they cannot defy things that are out of their control, such as the economic and political state of the school and surrounding area they function within.
Teachers struggle to combat economic forces and school practices that are outside their influence. Teachers do not draft their students. They show up that first day of school taking responsibility for what and who has been given to them. If teachers could choose their students, they would be able to reap the benefits of diversity that Amy Wells proposed by practicing things like supporting and sustaining diverse districts and communities, fostering cross-district cooperation/collaboration, and encouraging inter-district transfers (2014, pp. 22-23). In short, teachers cannot be blamed for consistent poverty (Denby, 2016). However, there are several ways for a teacher to have an impact on the environment beyond the classroom, such as collaborating with faculty members and working with parents by communicating with them. In addition, teachers strive to work on improving their instructional method, but spend too much energy on keeping records for legal purposes, hosting conferences to explain things to misunderstanding parents, holding staff meetings to explain to staff how the school operates, monitoring what the police should monitor, etc. (Haberman, 1991). Schools also limit their teachers by emphasizing technology use and standards instead of cultural differences and alternative perspectives (Greene, 1997), and then abandon things like the arts, gym, and recess (Denby, 2016; Cody, 2014). Moreover, teachers are made to do a lot with a little when funding is lacking (Jones, 2013), but unfortunately, this leads to burning out and feeling defeated, unable then to be motivated to fight the downfalls of the educational system.
Teachers fear job security, and focus more on saving themselves more than saving their students from the economic oppression that makes the teacher look bad. “Moral panic” is the tendency, that when there is an economic or social crisis, to lay blame on public school teachers (Denby, 2016). The problem here is that a current issue does not represent what current teachers are doing, unless they have been doing the same thing for a long time. However, something that has been going on in American schools for a long time is standardized testing, which the teachers do not have the option as to whether or not their students take them. Unfortunately, standardized tests measure demographics more than a teacher’s ability to teach (Denby, 2016; Lucas & Beresford, 2010; Jones, 2013). Furthermore, teaching to the test creates a culture of fitting into a mold rather than having teaching methods that fit to the student (Haberman, 1991). I think this malpractice, in my personal experience, has constructed an inevitable identity crisis where students in secondary education model their identity after others, finding what they have in common more beneficial than understanding than how they are different. James A. Baldwin argued “education is by society, for society,” but the problem is that students are not encouraged to ask questions about the universe and explore who they are as an individual because society wants obedient, like minded citizens (2008). Teachers lose sight of fostering an environment of individuality when standardized testing prefers to make the conventional student successful.
Teachers are unprepared to teach to the needs of the students by blending their cultural differences and personal interests into the curriculum.
Gloria Ladson-Billings’s monumental work on culturally relevant pedagogy has inspired many educators to strive to appeal to the diversity of their students. Culturally relevant pedagogy is “a theoretical model that [...] helps students to accept and affirm their cultural identity while developing critical perspectives that challenge inequities that schools (and other institutions) perpetuate” (Ladson-Billings, 1995, p. 469). However, if culture is taught, it tends to be taught like an ancient history class, where the culture has been long displaced from our modern perceptions. Only the best history teachers will link the history to the present in truly profound and meaningful ways. Django Paris accurately criticizes the view that teaching a culture belonging to poverty should not be taught in a “progressive” America (2012, p. 93). Teaching about the interests of a student is beneficial for them and using other cultures can spike their curiosity so that white students will want to investigate the topic. Paris furthers Ladson-Billings’s point about culture in classroom, in that it cannot simply be relevant to a specific moment in time, but it must be sustained over time. He suggests culturally responsive instruction: “Teaching and learning that seeks to perpetuate and foster linguistic, literate, and cultural pluralisms as part of the democratic project of schooling and as a necessary response to demographic and social change” (Ferlazzo & Paris, 2017). In practice, culturally responsive instruction has students return the favor to the teacher when the lesson values they
themselves. Culturalism is the concept that a cultural framework is in place in society where people have predetermined limitations of how they can live, and they can only operate within their particular framework. Within the field of academia, teacher’s are challenged by the individual’s socioeconomic status and the educational policies that hinder their scholastic career. Criticisms are the negative forces against teachers that do more to point out the issues without offering up solutions. In turn, teachers do more to save themselves, feeling as if their career is at risk as opposed to the focusing on how to better educate their students and save those who are at risk in the academic sense. Connectivity, or the lack thereof, represents the student’s need to feel connected to instruction and interconnected within their school. A lack of connectivity occurs when teachers struggle to construct lessons relevant to a student’s life beyond the classroom walls. Due to the brevity of this paper, I frustratingly leave you with more reasons to be disappointed in the education system than with solutions to the challenges teachers face. However, in recognizing these challenges, know that they are challenges that can be overcome and not absolute barriers that keep teachers from being a silver lining in a gloomy situation.