Raising the Achievement of all Students

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Raising the Achievement of all Students

• Equity in the Classroom Creating a Classroom
  Responsive to Culturally Diverse Students
• Powerpoint Two

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Agenda

• Introducing the concept of Educational Equity
• Discussing the building blocks of Educational
  Equity
• Focusing in on classroom instruction and the 3rs
• Examining what is culturally responsive teaching

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Educational Equity Culturally Responsive
Teaching

• Culturally responsive teaching is based on
  educational equity

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Educational Equity is

• When educational practices, policies,
  supports,curricula, school resources, and school
  culture are such as that all student have fair
  and consistent access to reach academic success,
  regardless of race, ses, gender, disability,
  national origin, religion, or other
  characteristics.

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Educational Equity

• More over, equity means ensuring that each
  students needs are met in order to be
  successful. Schools provide ongoing supports for
  all students, particularly historically
  marginalized student populations in public
  schools.

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The Key Concepts of Educational Equity Are

• Each student having access to rigorous curricula
  and high quality instruction
• Educators demonstrate in practice high
  expectations for all students
• Steps are taken to create a non-bias educational
  environment

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Your Thoughts - Reflection 1

• Given this definition of educational equity, what
  might be some barriers or challenges to providing
  an equitable learning experience for all
  children?
• What might be student characteristics that may
  make fair and consistent access to reaching
  academic success challenging?
• What might be classroom characteristics that may
  be may make fair and consistent access to
  reaching academic success challenging for some
  students?

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These are the Building Blocks of Educational
Equity

• Culturally responsive educational practices
• Multicultural Education
• Effective Instructional Environment

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Remember the 3 Rs of Culturally Responsive
Practices

• Relevance
• Respect
• Responsive

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• Ensuring educational equity is the purpose of
  culturally responsive teaching. As educators work
  to create learning environments that provide
  equitable learning opportunities for all students
  it is important to apply the 3Rs of culturally
  responsive practices to lesson/activity planning.

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• Educators must examine the extent to which the 3
  Rs of culturally responsive practices are
  reflected in lesson planning.

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Guiding Questions for Implementing the 3Rs in
Lesson Planning.

• In order to ensure cultural relevance educators
  should ask
• To what extent does this lesson, activity, or
  intervention reflect the experiences, interests,
  and background knowledge of the students in my
  class?
• How have I made connections for students
  regarding their new learning and their prior
  knowledge overt?
• How have I made this lesson, activity, etc.
  meaningful to my students?
• How have I clearly communicated the relationship
  of the information taught in this lesson to my
  students life experiences?

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Guiding Questions for Implementing the 3Rs in
Lesson Planning.

• To demonstrate Respect of diverse cultures
  educators should ask
• How have I demonstrated esteem or positive regard
  for the contributions made by people from diverse
  backgrounds (i.e. cultures, ethnicities,
  abilities, gender etc?
• How have I engaged students in learning that will
  illustrate diverse perspectives, experiences, and
  values in a non-biased manner?
• How have I incorporated my students
  home/community interests, experiences etc. in
  class lessons or activities?

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Guiding Questions for Implementing the 3Rs in
Lesson Planning.

• In order to be responsive to the learning needs
  of students educators should ask
• Have I built in additional supports appropriately
  matched to the needs of students who may require
  extra help to accomplish the objectives of this
  lesson or activity?
• How have I responded to the interests of my
  students when planning this lesson or activity?
• Students for whom typical classroom helping
  strategies are not enough to enable their
  success, have I accessed more intensive supports
  or interventions?

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Multicultural Education

• Multicultural education values cultural
  pluralism. It rejects the view that schools
  should seek to melt away cultural differences or
  the view that schools should tolerate cultural
  pluralism. Instead, multicultural education
  affirms that schools should be oriented toward
  the cultural enrichment of all children and youth
  through programs rooted to the preservation and
  extensions of cultural alternatives.
• Multicultural education recognizes cultural
  diversity as a fact of life in American society,
  and it affirms that this cultural diversity is a
  valuable resource that should be preserved and
  extended.
• Multicultural education reaches beyond awareness
  and understanding of cultural differences. More
  important than the acceptance and support of
  these differences is the recognition of cultural
  differences and an effective education program
  that makes cultural equality real and meaningful.
  (American Association of Colleges for Teacher
  Education , 1973, p. 264)

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To promote Multicultural Education Researcher
James Banks defined 5 Dimensions

• Content integration
• Knowledge construction
• Prejudice reduction
• Equity pedagogy
• Empowering school culture

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Banks 5 key dimensions of multicultural
education

• Content integration is teachers' use of examples,
  data, and information from a variety of cultures.
  
• Knowledge construction refers to teachers helping
  students understand how knowledge is created and
  how it is influenced by the racial, ethnic, and
  social-class positions of individuals and groups.

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Banks 5 key dimensions of multicultural
education

• Prejudice reduction is a critical goal of
  multicultural education. Prejudice reduction
  involves both development of positive
  relationships among students of different ethnic
  backgrounds and development of more democratic
  and tolerant attitudes toward others.
• The term equity pedagogy refers to the use of
  teaching techniques that facilitate the academic
  success of students from different ethnic and
  social class groups. For example, there is
  evidence that members of some ethnic and racial
  groups, especially Mexican Americans and African
  Americans, learn best with active and cooperative
  methods.

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Banks 5 key dimensions of multicultural
education

• An empowering school culture is one in which
  school organization and practices are conducive
  to the academic and emotional growth of all
  students.
• A school with such a culture might, for example,
  eliminate tracking or ability grouping, increase
  inclusion (and reduce labeling) of students with
  special needs, try to keep all students on a path
  leading to higher education, and consistently
  demonstrate high expectations for all students.

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Examining the Instructional Environment Requires
that we focus on

• Instruction
• Curriculum
• Environment

The following slides provide characteristics of
culturally responsive teaching practices in the
areas of instruction, curricula, and the
classroom environment.
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Culturally Responsive Effective Instruction
Involves

• Use of varied teaching styles
• Communicating high expectations
• Considering students interaction styles, when
  interacting with them
• Building on students existing knowledge
• Using students gifts and talents
• Responding to cultural differences
• Promoting interactions across diverse student
  groups
• Providing instruction that explicitly teaches the
  social and academic skills necessary to enable
  school success

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Specific Instructional Strategies That Promote
Student Achievement

• Teaching students to identify similarities and
  differences
• Explicitly teaching summarizing note taking
  skills
• Reinforcing effort providing recognition
• Homework practice
• Using nonlinguistic representations (visual,
  tangible)
• Using cooperative learning activities
• Setting objectives providing feedback
• Establishing language objectives for each lesson

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Instructional Strategies That Promote Student
Achievement continued

• Teaching students to generate test hypotheses
• Using questions, cues and advance organizers
• Employing peer assisted learning activities
• Study skills instruction
• Vocabulary building
• Providing explicit instruction of critical skills
• Teaching students metacognitive approaches to
  problem solving (i.e. think alouds)

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Culturally Responsive Curricula Involves

• Using curricular materials that reflect
  diverse/multicultural experiences and
  perspectives
• Using curricular materials that reflect the
  contributions of people from diverse backgrounds
• Using rigorous curricula, aligned with state
  content standards

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Culturally Responsive Learning Environment
Involves

• Creating opportunities for peer to peer supports
• Ensuring that visiting resource people come from
  diverse backgrounds/cultures
• Avoiding stereotyping
• Providing visuals that reflect respect, equity
  and diversity
• Confronting bias and stereotyping

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At the core of creating educational equity in the
classroom is culturally responsive teaching

• What is culturally responsive teaching?

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Culturally Responsive Teaching

• is dynamic using varied and research validated
  teaching methods to create engaging and effective
  learning experiences.
• demonstrates that the teacher sees him/herself as
  part of the community.
• affirms the belief that all students will succeed
  and work to make it happen.

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Culturally Responsive Teaching

• Helps students make connections between their
  community, national, and global identities.
• Use instructional strategies that pull
  knowledge out of students, helping them to
  connect new learning to prior knowledge or
  experiences instead of seeing teaching as solely
  putting knowledge into students.
• From Gloria Ladson-Billings

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Special thanks to

• The Education Trust
• The National Center for Culturally Responsive
  Education Systems
• National Academies of Sciences
• The Ohio Department of Education Office for
  Exceptional Children
• The Southwestern Ohio Special Education Regional
  Resource Center

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E-Course Design Team

• Mireika Kobayashi, M.Ed. Bilingual School
  Psychologist Cincinnati Public Schools.
• Constance Reyes Rau, M.Ed. Consultant Title
  III Lead SWO SERRC
• Karen Schaeffer, Ph.D Consultant Professional
  Development and Technical Assistance Lead SWO
  SERRC
• Seena M. Skelton, Ph.D. Consultant Culturally
  Responsive Practices Lead SWO SERRC