Who is in your class? Who lives in your world?

1. Who is in your class?Who lives in your world? Thoughts on how to teach and reach your students…

2. If the World Were a Village of 100 PeopleIf we could reduce the world’s population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all existing human ratios remaining the same, the demographics would look something like this: The village would have 60 Asians, 14 Africans, 12 Europeans, 8 Latin Americans, 5 from the USA and Canada, and 1 from the South Pacific51 would be male, 49 would be female82 would be non-white; 18 white67 would be non-Christian; 33 would be Christian80 would live in substandard housing67 would be unable to read50 would be malnourished and 1 dying of starvation33 would be without access to a safe water supply 39 would lack access to improved sanitation24 would not have any electricity (And of the 76 that do have electricity, most would only use it for light at night.)7 people would have access to the Internet1 would have a college education1 would have HIV2 would be near birth; 1 near death5 would control 32% of the entire world’s wealth; all 5 would be US citizens33 would be receiving --and attempting to live on-- only 3% of the income of “the village” • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1v9xJPiIlQU

3. Stats on North Carolina By 2020, estimates show that half of the U.S. population will be from groups traditionally referred to as “minority”. In other word, the majority culture will become the minority culture.

4. Typical Class We sort students using many different categories: socio-economic level academic ability learning differences religious/cultural heritage family structure English speaker differently-abled race local vs. foreign suburban/urban/rural adopted vegetarian vs. vegan vs. omnivore Gifted vs. Resource Shy vs. Outgoing Trouble maker vs. “never a problem”

5. Teacher choices and practices As the teacher, you can create a classroom community where these differences are accepted, celebrated, and/or regarded as facts, not as value-laden details. Example: BlueJah, Daniel, Quamaine, Zenevia (Shay-Shay), & Aaron (“Smitty”) Strategies: “shoe circle”, skin tones rainbow, fair vs. equal, travel across the room,

6. How to help prepare your students Learn how to infuse classroom with Multicultural Education • Be careful to not teach the history and stories of people of color and women only during February and March • Avoid “Stomp and Chomp” or “Tourist” approach (A lesson on Mexico does not equal chips and piñatas.)

7. Multicultural education is a philosophical concept built on the ideals of freedom, justice, equality, equity, and human dignity as acknowledged in various documents, such as the U.S. Declaration of Independence, constitutions of South Africa and the United States, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations.  It affirms our need to prepare student for their responsibilities in an interdependent world.  It recognizes the role schools can play in developing the attitudes and values necessary for a democratic society.   It values cultural differences and affirms the pluralism that students, their communities, and teachers reflect.  It challenges all forms of discrimination in schools and society through the promotion of democratic principles of social justice.  Source: The National Association for Multicultural Education is the leading international and national organization in the area of multicultural education. For additional information, contact NAME at name@nameorg.org or visit the website at www.nameorg.org. Multicultural Education

8. Tell the whole story… • Lewis Latimer was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts in 1848. He was the son of George and Rebecca Latimer, escaped slaves from Virginia. When Lewis Latimer was a boy his father George was arrested and tried as a slave fugitive. The judge ordered his return to Virginia and slavery, but money was raised by the local community to pay for George Latimer's freedom. George Latimer later went underground fearing his re-enslavement, a great hardship for Lewis' family. • Lewis Latimer enlisted in the Union Navy at the age of 15 by forging the age on his birth certificate. Upon the completion of his military service, Lewis Latimer returned to Boston, Massachusetts where he was employed by the patent solicitors Crosby & Gould. While working in the office Lewis began the study of drafting and eventually became their head draftsmen. During his employment with Crosby & Gould, Latimer drafted the patent drawings for Alexander Graham Bell's patent application for the telephone, spending long nights with the inventor.

9. Why consider Cultural Responsiveness? • Passage of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) and the resulting requirement that schools report disaggregated data have focused a spotlight on the achievement gaps that have persisted for years between children of color, children in poverty, and English language learning (ELL) students and their mainstream peers. • Achievement gaps and significant inequities continue to exist for a wide range of educational indicators including grades, scores on standardized tests, dropout rates, and participation in higher education (Education Trust, 2004; NCES, 2001; Viadero & Johnston, 2000). • Disparities in achievement stem in part from a lack of fit between traditional school practices—which are derived almost exclusively from European American culture—and the home cultures of diverse students and their families (Cummins, 1986; Delpit, 1995; Ladson-Billings, 1995). • According to this theory, children whose cultural background is European American have an innate educational advantage, while children from other backgrounds are required "to learn through cultural practices and perceptions other than their own" (Hollins, 1996). This "cultural mismatch" is often a result of widely divergent worldviews about such fundamental concepts as human nature, time, the natural environment, and social relationships (Sowers, 2004).

10. More thoughts on why being a culturally responsive teacher might help students to close the achievement gap? • Education system rooted in the dominant culture is inherently biased. When one set of beliefs is held up as "right" or "normal," the values of other cultural groups are treated as less valid, and children from those groups can be perceived as culturally deficient. Evidence of this attitude can be found in statistics reflecting higher rates of discipline and suspension among children of color, particularly African American boys, and disproportionate numbers of minority and ELL students in special education. At the same time, these students are sharply underrepresented in gifted and advanced placement classes. • By adopting culturally responsive school practices, educators seek to address issues of educational inequity and confront institutional bias and discrimination. • Source: Northwest Regional Education Laboratory http://www.nwrel.org/request/2005june/incontext.html

11. Culturally Responsive Teaching is a pedagogy that recognizes the importance of including students' cultural references in all aspects of learning (Ladson-Billings,1994). • Some of the characteristics of culturally responsive teaching are: • Positive perspectives on parents and families • Communication of high expectations • Learning within the context of culture • Student-centered instruction • Culturally mediated instruction • Reshaping the curriculum • Teacher as facilitator

12. Positive Perspectives on Parents and Families • "Whether it’s an informal chat as the parent brings the child to school, or in phone conversation or home visits, or through newsletters sent home, teachers can begin a dialogue with family members that can result in learning about each of the families through genuine communication." • -- Sonia Nieto • Seek to understand parents' hopes, concerns and suggestions • Conduct needs assessments and surveys (in the parents' first language) of what parents expect of the school community • Establish parent-teacher organizations or committees to work collaboratively for the benefit of the students • Conduct home visits in which parents are able to speak freely about their expectations and concerns for their children • Keep parents apprised of services offered by the school • Send weekly/monthly newsletters (in the home language) informing parents of school activities • Conduct monthly meeting at parents' homes or community centers to inform parents of school activities • Host family nights at school to introduce parents to concepts and ideas children are learning in their classes and to share interactive journals • Gain cross-cultural skills necessary for successful exchange and collaboration • Research the cultural background of students' families • Visit local community centers to find out about the cultural activities and beliefs of the students • Tour students' neighborhoods to identify local resources and "funds of knowledge" (Moll et al., 1992) • Source: Teaching Diverse Learnershttp://www.alliance.brown.edu/tdl/

13. Student-Centered Instruction • "In our multicultural society, culturally responsive teaching reflects democracy at its highest level. [It] means doing whatever it takes to ensure that every child is achieving and ever moving toward realizing her or his potential." --Joyce Taylor-Gibson (*) • Promote student engagement • Have students generate lists of topics they wish to study and/or research • Allow students to select their own reading material • Share responsibility of instruction • Initiate cooperative learning groups (Padron, Waxman, & Rivera, 2002) • Have students lead discussion groups or reteach concepts • Create inquiry based/discovery oriented curriculum • Create classroom projects that involve the community • Encourage a community of learners • Form book clubs or literature circles (Daniels, 2002) for reading discussions • Conduct Student-Directed Sharing Time (Brisk & Harrington, 2000) • Use cooperative learning strategies such as Jigsaw (Brisk & Harrington, 2000)

14. Communication of High Expectations “When a teacher expresses sympathy over failure, lavishes praise for completing a simple task, or offers unsolicited help, the teacher may send unintended messages of low expectations.“ -- Kathleen Serverian-Wilmeth Communicate clear expectations • Be specific in what you expect students to know and be able to do Create an environment in which there is genuine respect for students and a belief in their capability • Encourage students to meet expectations for a particular task • Offer praise when standards are met

15. Language Diversity English as a Second Language (ESL) Sheltered Instruction (SIOP) Preparation Building Background Comprehensible Input Strategies Interaction Practice/Application Lesson Delivery Review and Assessment Bilingual instruction

16. How to welcome and teach all students **Remember Vygotsky and language acquisition and benefits of social interactions Best Practices: • Environmental print • Culturally conscious literature • Language buddies • Invite parent/family involvement • Find ways to integrate facts about native country • Connect families to local resources, educate yourself

17. Educating Exceptional Children • Greet the child, un-open the gift. • Prepare for a year of huge professional growth. • Remember all children can learn. • Remember basics of child development and learning stages and milestones. • Best practices tend to overlap for children with exceptional needs and students in regular education. • All children benefit from cooperation and collaboration among home, school and community.

18. Definitions • Visually impaired (VI)- A vision loss, which, even with correction, adversely affects educational performance to the extent specially designed instruction is required. The loss is as follows: visual acuity even with prescribed lenses that is 20/70 or worse in the better eye; or visual acuity that is better than 20/70 and the child has one of these conditions- a medically diagnosed progressive loss of vision, a visual field of 20 degrees or worse, a medically diagnosed condition of cortical blindness, or a functional vision loss. • Hearing impaired (HI)- A hearing loss that has an adverse affect on educational performance to the extent specially designed instruction is required- whether permanent or fluctuating, ranging from mild to profound (a loss of 25 decibels or greater exists through speech frequencies of 500, 1000, and 2000 Hertz in the better ear), and of a degree that the child is impaired in the processing of linguistic information through hearing, with or without amplification. • Mild mental disability (MMD)- A deficit or delay in intellectual functioning (at least two but no more than three standard deviations below the mean) and adaptive behavior (at least two standard deviations below the mean), which adversely affects overall academic performance to the extent that specially designed instruction is required, and which typically manifests during the developmental period. • Functional mental disability (FMD)- A deficit or delay in intellectual functioning (at least three or more standard deviations below the mean) and adaptive behavior (at least three or more standard deviations below the mean), which is typically manifested during the developmental period. A severe deficit exists in overall academic performance and specially designed instruction is required for the child to benefit from education.

19. More definitions… • Multiple disabilities- A combination of two or more disabilities (e.g., mental disability-blindness, mental disability-orthopedic impairment, etc.) resulting in significant learning, developmental, or behavioral and emotional problems, which adversely affect educational performance and cause severe educational needs that cannot be accommodated in special education programs solely for one of the impairments. A child is not considered to have a multiple disability if the adverse effect on performance is solely the result of deaf-blindness or the result of a speech language disability and one other disability. • Autism- A developmental disability significantly affecting verbal and nonverbal communication and social interaction, generally evident before age three that adversely affects a child’s educational performance. Other characteristics often associated with autism are engagement in repetitive activities and stereotyped movements, resistance to environmental change or change in daily routines, and unusual responses to sensory experiences. The term does not apply if a child’s educational performance is adversely affected because the child has an emotional behavioral disability. • Deaf-blind- Combined hearing and visual impairments that have an adverse affect on the child’s education performance, the combination of which causes severe communication and other developmental and educational needs that cannot be accommodated in special education programs solely for children with hearing or visual impairments, unless supplementary assistance is provided to address educational needs resulting from the two disabilities. Specially designed instruction is required to address needs of both disabilities. • Traumatic brain injury (TBI)- An acquired injury to the brain caused by an external physical force, which adversely affects educational performance and causes temporary or permanent and partial or complete loss of cognitive functioning, physical ability or communication or social-behavioral interaction (e.g., memory, reasoning, abstract thinking, judgment, psychosocial behavior, speech, problem-solving, etc.). The term does not mean a brain injury that is congenital or degenerative, or brain injuries induced by birth trauma.

20. Multiple Intelligences • The theory of multiple intelligences was developed in 1983 by Dr. Howard Gardner, professor of education at Harvard University. It suggests that the traditional notion of intelligence, based on I.Q. testing, is far too limited. Instead, Dr. Gardner proposes eight different intelligences to account for a broader range of human potential in children and adults. • These intelligences are: • Linguistic intelligence ("word smart"): • Logical-mathematical intelligence ("number/reasoning smart") Spatial intelligence ("picture smart") • Bodily-Kinesthetic intelligence ("body smart") • Musical intelligence ("music smart") • Interpersonal intelligence ("people smart") • Intrapersonal intelligence ("self smart") • Naturalist intelligence ("nature smart")

21. Canary in coal mine • Dr. Gardner says that our schools and culture focus most of their attention on linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligence. We esteem the highly articulate or logical people of our culture. • However, Dr. Gardner says that we should also place equal attention on individuals who show gifts in the other intelligences: the artists, architects, musicians, naturalists, designers, dancers, therapists, entrepreneurs, and others who enrich the world in which we live. • Unfortunately, many children who have these gifts don’t receive much reinforcement for them in school. Many of these kids, in fact, end up being labeled "learning disabled," "ADD (attention deficit disorder," or simply underachievers, when their unique ways of thinking and learning aren’t addressed by a heavily linguistic or logical-mathematical classroom. • The theory of multiple intelligences proposes a major transformation in the way our schools are run. It suggests that teachers be trained to present their lessons in a wide variety of ways using music, cooperative learning, art activities, role play, multimedia, field trips, inner reflection, and much more (see Multiple Intelligences in the Classroom). Source: www.thomasarmstrong.com