Start with Responsive
I am always surprised when I share with people that being culturally responsive begins with relationships and they reject it as not “real” or “too soft”. They want to focus on social justice issues like white privilege or oppression of people of color, or they want...
We All Can Be Authentic Merchants of Hope
It was mid-morning and I had just finished presenting the idea of cultural archetypes to a room full of middle school teachers. They taught at a school where 75% of the students, mostly Black and Latino, have performed well below proficiency in reading and math for...
Why You Need to Diversify Your Diverse Books
The other day, as I scrolled through my Twitter feed, I noticed that a lot of schools kicked off Black History Month with teachers, special guests, and even superintendents reading Black-themed books to groups of children. They posted pictures of a sea of brown,...
Be the Change You Wish to See in the Classroom
It’s MLK Day and the perfect time to start a conversation about how close the knowing-doing gap around improving teaching and learning for diverse students through culturally responsive teaching. We hear it all the time. We need to get test scores up. We have to...
Five Teacher Mindsets that Undermine CRT
Well, 2015 was an exciting year. It was so exciting that it’s kept me away from this space for a while. I know you thought I’d gone on some walkabout. Well, I did, sort of. This same time last year, my book, Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain had been out...
Breaking Out of The Bilingualism Double Standard
In the United States, we have a double standard regarding bilingualism in school. This double standard is a result of the implicit bias we have around immigrant students from non-European countries, especially those from Latin America. We approach linguistically...
End with the End in Mind
We’ve come to the end of the school year. The past few weeks have been filled with graduation celebrations everywhere I turn, and I am ready to get in the mix. I start the week addressing a group of graduating seniors at their commencement. Then my own daughter...
Five Tips for Using the End of School to Strengthen Academic Mindset
Well, Memorial Day is just around the corner and it’s all over but the shouting. Testing is behind us. Finals will come and go and there’ll still be a week or so of school left. As culturally responsive teachers, I think we often miss the opportunity to use the last...
Three Ways to Reclaim Cinco de Mayo
I grow up in San Francisco at a time when Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta were organizing the United Farm Worker’s Union and marching in the streets demanding better working conditions for Chicano/a migrant workers. Yes, as an African American family involved in the...
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