Cultural Proficiency

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Cultural Proficiency

• Tools for School Leaders

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Your Facilitators

• Kikanza Nuri Robins, EdD
• Principal, The Robins Group
• Randall B. Lindsey, PhD
• Interim Dean, California Lutheran University
• Associate, The Robins Group
• Co-Authors of the Cultural Proficiency books
  (Corwin Press)

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Cultural Proficiency

• A mind set a way of being
• The use of specific tools
• Policies and practices within organizations
• Values and behaviors of individuals
• The gift of Terry Cross
• A Culturally Competent System of Care, 1989

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An Inside-Out Approach

• Tied to your core values
• Using your organizational structure and systems
• Described with your language
• Building on your organizational norms and
  traditions
• Infused, transformed, and bolstered with the
  tools of Cultural Proficiency

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Cultural Proficiency Helps

• To create learning communitiesamong and between
  educators and students
• To align your values and educational philosophies
  with your daily practices

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A Moral Frame for Teaching

• A commitment to practice in an exemplary way
• A commitment to practice toward valued societal
  ends
• A commitment not only to ones own practice, but
  to the practice itself
• A commitment to sharing knowledge and skills with
  other professionals
• A commitment to the ethic of caring
• Sergiovanni, 1994

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Activity

• Why am I an educator?
• What do I stand for as an educational leader?
• What difference do I make now?
• What legacy do I want to leave?
• Why do I want to become culturally proficient?

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Education in and for Democracy

• The best case for public education has always
  been that it is a common good.
• As the main institution for fostering social
  cohesion in an increasingly diverse society,
  publicly funded schools must serve all children,
  not simply those with the loudest or most
  powerful advocates. This means addressing the
  cognitive and social needs of all children, with
  an emphasis on including those who may not have
  been well served in the past.
• Michael Fullan, The Moral Imperative of School
  Leadership

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Major Equity Events

• Mendez vs. Westminster - 1947
• Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education - 1954
• School desegregation cases
• Public School Accountability Act - 1999
• No Child Left Behind - 2002

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The Tools of Cultural Proficiency

• The Continuum
• Language for describing both healthy and
  non-productive policies, practices and individual
  behaviors
• The Essential Elements
• Behavioral standards for measuring, and planning
  for, growth toward cultural proficiency
• The Barriers
• Caveats that assist in responding effectively to
  resistance to change
•  The Guiding Principles
• Underlying values of the approach

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The Continuum

• There are six points along the cultural
  proficiency continuum that indicate unique ways
  of perceiving and responding to differences.

• Cultural destructiveness
• Cultural incapacity
• Cultural blindness
• Cultural pre-competence
• Cultural competence
• Cultural proficiency

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The Power of Context

• It is not the heroic actions of tackling complex
  societal problems that count instead, the power
  of context says that what really matters is the
  little things.
• Fullan 2003

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ActivityWords often used to describe some
groups and implied terms for others

• Inferior
• Culturally deprived
• Culturally disadvantaged
• Deficient
• Different
• Diverse
• Third world
• Minority
• Underclass
• Poor
• Unskilled workers

• Superior
• Privileged
• Advantaged
• Normal
• Similar
• Uniform
• First world
• Majority
• Upper class
• Middle class
• Leaders

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Activity

• Examples along the Continuum
• Reflect on comments you have heard, situations
  you have experienced, and events you have
  observed
• Where would you place them on the continuum?

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Research-Based Pedagogy for Narrowing the
Achievement Gap

• Teachers have a clear sense of their own cultural
  identities.
• Teachers communicate high expectations for
  learning and a belief that all students can
  succeed.
• Teachers are committed to achieving equity for
  all students and believe they are capable of
  making a difference in students learning.

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Narrowing the Gap, continued

• Teachers cease seeing students as the other.
• Teachers provide academically challenging
  curriculum that includes the development of
  higher-level cognitive skills.
• Teachers guide students to create meaning about
  content in interactive, collaborative
  environments.

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Narrowing the Gap, continued

• Teachers provide learning tasks that students see
  as meaningful.
• Teachers provide a curriculum with multiple
  perspectives.
• Teachers scaffold new and challenging curriculum
  to existing student resources and knowledge.

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Narrowing the Gap, continued

• Teachers explicitly teach students to know and
  maintain a sense of ethno-cultural pride and
  identity.
• Teachers encourage parents and community to
  become partners in students' education.
• Parents are given a significant voice in making
  decisions related to school programs and
  resources.
• B. Williams, Closing the Achievement Gap, 2003

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The Essential Elements

• The Essential Elements of cultural proficiency
  provide the standards for individual behavior and
  organizational practices

1. Assessing Culture Naming the differences
2. Valuing Diversity Claiming the differences

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The Essential Elements (cont.)

1. Managing the Dynamics of Difference Reframing
   the differences
2. Adapting to Diversity - Training about the
   differences
3. Institutionalizing Cultural Knowledge Changing
   for differences

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Activity

• Making Room at the Table
• Examine a few of the tables at which you sit.
• How did you get there?
• Do you have a voice?
• How do you help or hinder others who want to sit
  at the table?

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The Barriers

• The barriers to cultural proficiency are systemic
  privilege and resistance to change

• The presumption of entitlement
• Systems of oppression
• Unawareness of the need to adapt

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Activity

• Examples of Barriers
• There are many barriers that are out of your
  control
• List some of the barriers that are within your
  sphere of influence

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Activity

• Telling Your Stories
• Select a term and tell your colleagues of a time
  when you experienced that social phenomenon
• Listen for the emotional content of the story

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The Guiding Principles

• The Guiding Principles are the core values, the
  foundation upon which the approach is built

• Culture is a predominant force
• People are served in varying degrees by the
  dominant culture
• Acknowledge group identities
• Diversity within cultures is important
• Respect unique cultural needs

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Courageous Leadership

• There are many persons ready to do what is right
  because in their hearts they know it is right.
  But they hesitate, waiting for the other one to
  make the first move and the other, in turn,
  waits for you. The minute a person whose word
  means a great deal dares to take the openhearted
  and courageous way, many others follow.
• Marian Anderson, 1956

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The Moral Imperative

• Listening . . . requires not only open eyes and
  ears, but open hearts and minds. We do not really
  see through our eyes or hear through our ears,
  but through our beliefs. . . . It is not easy,
  but it is the only way to learn what it might
  feel like to be someone else and the only way to
  start the dialogue.
• Lisa Delpit

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A Culturally Proficient Vision

• Equity will be a reality when children from
  minority racial, cultural, socio-economic, and
  linguistic backgrounds experience statistically
  similar rates of meeting high standards as do
  children from the majority culture.
• Bay Area Educational Equity Task Force