One summer I signed up for a three-week
course in labor relations at the University of Alaska in
Fairbanks. The instructor, an Alaska native, told me he
was glad to have a student "from the lower 48." The
dozen or so others, he explained, were mostly elders
from remote villages who had been recruited to take the
course through a state government project.
I recall much of what I learned about collective
bargaining that summer, but mostly I remember the
life-changing lessons I learned from the elders who
became my friends. One lesson had to do with their
penchant for quiet companionship.
Each evening my new-found friends filed into my dorm
suite and sat, smiling and nodding, while I scurried to
serve tea and start conversation. One evening the eldest
of the elders stayed after the others departed. "We come
only to be in your presence," she said, then slipped
away.
In that instant I had my cultural comeuppance. The
next evening I served tea and then sat silently, smiling
and nodding. The elders' eyes shone with approval.
Different worlds
You don't have to go north to Alaska to find the sort
of cultural dissonance that I experienced. In fact, you
might not have to travel beyond your own schools.
Increasingly, teachers and students come from
different cultural backgrounds. Line up a representative
sample of students from the nation's classrooms with a
sample of teachers, and you'll see striking
differences.
Teachers, say Carol Weinstein and her colleagues at
Rutgers University, are overwhelmingly white and English
speaking. But more than one-third of K-12 students
nationwide are not white, and about one in 10 speaks
limited English.Socioeconomic differences are also
significant: Most teachers are middle-class, but about
20 percent of U.S. students come from poor families and
neighborhoods.
The differences can erupt into cultural clashes, says
Geneva Gay of the University of Washington in Seattle.
Her studies show that many teachers expect their
ethnically diverse students to learn and behave
according to mainstream European-American cultural
standards -- in other words, to learn and behave as the
teachers do.
To illustrate the problems that can ensue when kids
think and act differently from their teachers, Gay
describes a common classroom scene in which teachers
insist that students sit quietly, listen to lectures,
answer questions, and compete for high grades. But
African-American kids, Gay says, often interject
comments or blurt out answers when they're deeply
engaged in a lesson. All too often, she says, teachers
misinterpret the kids' enthusiasm and punish them for
being "rude and disruptive."
Disapproval, rejection
Instances of cultural dissonance are all too easy to
come by. Weinstein gives these examples:
• A second-grade teacher scolded a Vietnamese girl
for low motivation and falling back on her first
language. The teacher didn't understand that the child
was confused and uncertain about the assignments, and
she didn't know the girl was saying, in her dialect, "I
am politely listening to you."
• A third-grade teacher informed Mexican immigrants
that their daughter was "insecure and overly dependent."
The teacher didn't realize the parents taught their
little girl to be quiet and obedient and to seek
approval while working on her assignments.
• A teacher viewed the Pacific Islander children in
her classroom as "lazy and noncompliant." The teacher
didn't understand why these students, raised to value
peaceful interpersonal relationships, were reluctant to
participate in spelldowns and other classroom
competitions.
• A teacher was angry with a Southeast Asian student
who, she said, "smirked disrespectfully" when she
disciplined him. The teacher didn't understand that in
the boy's culture, a smile was an admission of guilt and
also conveyed "no hard feelings."
It's good practice to
understand and respect minority students -- and, as Gay
argues, it also leads to higher achievement and better
discipline. Researchers at the Northwest Regional
Educational Laboratory support Gay's claim, noting that
many anecdotal case studies show how culturally
responsive practices improve students' behavior and
achievement.
And it can't happen too soon: By the age of 8,
according to NWREL, children whose teachers fail to
provide home-school cultural connections lose their
self-confidence and enthusiasm for learning. Sensing
their teachers' disapproval and rejection, they give up
trying to succeed.
Overcoming cultural conflicts
How can schools overcome deeply embedded cultural
conflicts? Gay recommends that teachers and school
leaders become experts in "culturally responsive
teaching," a method that uses students' "cultural
knowledge, prior experiences, and learning styles" in
daily lessons.
But culturally responsive teaching doesn't mean
adopting a "tacos on Tuesday" fest or a "tourist
approach to diversity," NWREL researchers contend.
Classroom lessons on holidays and food perpetuate ethnic
stereotypes, they say, instead of promoting genuine
understanding of "real-life, everyday experiences and
problems of other cultures."
Luis Moll, an expert in bilingual literacy at the
University of Arizona, developed a better culturally
responsive instructional method during his study of
Tucson schools located in Mexican-American working-class
neighborhoods.
Moll was troubled by two things that he routinely
observed in the barrio schools. For one thing, the
teachers gave students mostly skill-and-drill lessons,
filled with facts and rules but with no connection to
their home life. And they consistently underestimated
their students' and the students' families'
"intellectual fund of knowledge." That fund was full and
deep, Moll found when he made home visits. Most Latinos
he met had a "formidable understanding" of many topics,
he said, including agriculture, mining, medicine,
religion, biology, and math.
Moll persuaded a group of teachers to participate in
an after-school study group and to try a "sociological
approach to instruction." One was Hilda Angiulo, a
bilingual education teacher whose sixth-grade students
did not find the traditional reading materials
interesting.
With Moll's encouragement, Angiulo designed an
instructional unit on building and construction,
challenging her students to design architectural models
with the help of library materials and expert advice
from parents and others in the barrio. Before long, her
classroom was filled with adult helpers who brought in
tools, demonstrated building skills, and worked
side-by-side with students to solve math problems.
Angiulo created a "social network" that supported her
"able but misjudged youngsters," Moll writes. By the end
of the unit, more than 20 adults had shared their
knowledge with the students, and together they designed
and built a scale-model community, complete with
streets, parks, and houses. The teacher rated the
experience a total success, noting that her students
willingly and enthusiastically researched and wrote
reports on their projects.
The missing piece
Culturally responsive classroom management goes
hand-in-hand with culturally responsive teaching, says
Carol Weinstein. Classroom management is often thought
to be "culturally neutral," she says, when in fact, it's
primarily a "white, middle-class construction" that can
potentially limit minority students' achievement.
That's exactly what Cynthia Ballenger, an experienced
preschool teacher, discovered when she was assigned a
classroom of 4-year-old Haitian children. In
Teaching Other People's Children, Ballenger says
she quickly discovered that the Haitian kids had no use
for her standard classroom rules and that, day-by-day,
she "had very little sense of being in control."
Ballenger observed that teachers who were Haitian had
no classroom management problems, which led her to
conclude that her problems "did not reside with the
children."
She realized that she typically disciplined children
by describing their feelings ("You must be angry"),
where the Haitian teachers relayed expectations ("I like
you and want you to be good"). She also emphasized
consequences for bad behavior ("If you don't listen,
you'll have trouble working on this project"). The
Haitian teachers, by contrast, emphasized the importance
of helping their group ("We need you to count out the
crayons so everyone at your table can work on the
project").
Weinstein says Ballenger learned the difference
between discipline (ways teachers respond to students'
inappropriate behavior) and culturally based classroom
management (ways teachers prevent behavior problems by
creating caring, respectful environments that support
learning). She also recognized that her beliefs and
assumptions were based on a white, middle-class world
view that not all cultures share.
To guard against misreading students' behavior,
Weinstein says, teachers should learn about their
students' cultures and behaviors, determine what is
acceptable in their environment, and acknowledge these
beliefs and actions in their day-to-day teaching.
In short, she says, teachers need to master
culturally responsive classroom management -- the
"missing piece" that will help culturally diverse
students learn. And that means teachers must be trained
to:
1. Recognize their ethnocentrism -- the judgments and
assumptions they make about students through their own,
often superior, cultural point of view;
2. Know and understand their students' cultural
heritage;
3. Understand social, economic, and political issues
and values in different cultures;
4. Adopt the attitude that students from minority
cultures can learn; and
5. Create genuinely caring classrooms where all
students are appreciated and accepted.
What is good and sensitive practice with all
students, in other words, is especially important when
the teacher comes from a different background than the
students. All teachers -- inexperienced and experienced
-- should receive this important training. It's the
right thing to do.
