One of the things I’m struggling with this year is my view that culturally responsive teaching has to start with learning, exploring, and understanding our own identity, bias, & prejudice etc. and how those ideas were formed throughout our lives. Others have told me that CRT can be integrated into instruction without first understanding this. I disagree.

I’m also wondering, well, isn’t CRT just being a good teacher? Can we really teach this? The answer that I have found is that yes, CRT can become a natural value and practice if people first have the experiences of…. learning, exploring, and understanding our own identity, bias, & prejudice etc. and we are back to where I started.

Looking for culturally responsive books at the school library, found 2 different books on America Ferrera but none on Malcolm X in the bilingual section. In the English section I found this gem. WTH?

deejaybird:

If you ever visit Melanasia and Australia one cannot help but be amazed by the striking blond hair of some of its inhabitants, since these Pacific islands are populated by some of the darkest skinned people in the world. The Aboriginal people of Australia and the South Pacific islands, such as the Solomon Islands,Vanuatu, and Fiji at birth are born with blond hair. In maturity the hair usually turns a darker brown color, but sometimes remains blond. Now, a study of people from the Solomon Islands shows that they evolved the striking blonde trait independently of people in Europe. These Aborigines are the oldest continuous population outside of Africa. The modern Aborigines are the direct descendants of the first explorers to leave Africa and arrive in the South Pacific 50,000 to 70,000 years ago. Scientist believe this genetic mutation appeared in Europe only about 11,000 years ago during the last ice age. THE ORIGINAL BLONDS…….

Blondies

deejaybird:

United States of America, Mexico, Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay, Venezuela, Anguilla, Antigua, Aruba, Bahamas, Barbados, Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Haiti, Jamaica, Martinique, Montserrat, Netherlands Antilles, Puerto Rico, Saint Barthélemy, Saint Kitts, Saint Lucia, Saint Martin, Saint Vincent, Trinidad, Turks-and-Caicos

Something so sad about this pic, I tell ya. Can you imagine growing up without dolls that looks like you? I can. :(

If ppl think it’s ok to have a “Mexican themed party” then why doesn’t anyone ever have an “African themed party” or a “Middle Eastern themed party”?

This is some of the funniest shit ever.

So our assignment for the next week is to sit through some semi-boring trainings, and then create a presentation for schools that will help facilitate buy in with the teachers, introduce ourselves, make us seem approachable, and show that culturally responsive teaching is not an “add on” to the curriculum but rather imbedded in our behavior and teaching.  Today’s training was actually OK. We learned how to best approach people when giving advice and how to coach. It was good review. Don’t enable, don’t be too bossy etc. 

My partner R and I will be working directly with 10 schools (there are only 2 of us to work with about 6,000 teachers, so while it’s unfortunate that all schools don’t get a culturally responsive teacher leader, it is good for us that we’ll be focused on 10 schools.) So anyway, we had the afternoon to work on our presentations but R and I realized that we need to define ourselves so that we can answer the question, 

“So, what does a culturally responsive teacher leader do?”

The answer we came up with is, 

“Culturally responsive teachers understand and appreciate the cultures of all students and their families and integrate them into all curricular areas as it directly relates to improving academic performance.”

We found that Gloria Ladson-Billings has done a lot of work on this and there is some really awesome sauce here. 

What the hell is up with people using the expression “drive by” interchangeably with “slowly passing by”? As in, “I was doing a drive by at the water cooler and overheard Marty say we’re out of staples.”

What insensitive bullshit, and from teachers that work with kids that know what a drive by is first hand, I might add. Sheesh.