Chapter 3 Summary

Teachers should advocate for all students’ backgrounds and cultures to better their students’ learning. To accomplish this, teachers should be informed about their students’ home lives, be conscious of how and what they should be taught, and ultimately make their education a priority. Students from poverty in a multicultural classroom need the correct tools and teaching approaches from their teachers.

Overcoming stereotyping is a challenge educators can encounter when it comes to ensuring that teaching strategies are appropriate for culturally diverse children. Some educators may compare one child to another child that comes from the same cultural background and use the same teaching strategy. One way to overcome this is to make sure that educators know each of the students individually instead of comparing one to another or relying on stereotyping. “To truly engage students, we must reach out to them in ways that are culturally and linguistically responsive and appropriate, and we must examine the cultural assumptions and stereotypes we bring into the classroom that may hinder interconnectedness.” (Teaching Tolerance, 1991) Once they know more about each of the students then they can avoid stereotyping and adjust their teaching strategy to meet the individual needs of the students in the classroom.

Culturally Responsive Teaching is an emerging field that focuses on student cultural backgrounds and experiences in the development of pedagogy. According to Kea (2013) cultural difference is the single largest difference in U.S. schools and also the most neglected. The goal of Culturally Responsive Teaching is to provide an equal opportunity for all students to learn in school, regardless of their gender, social class, ethnic, racial or cultural characteristics (Banks 2005). Ladson-Billings (1994) suggest that the historic failings of educators in educating non-white students is that educators attempt to insert culture into education rather than insert education into the culture. In other words, educators are not providing an equal multi-culturally relevant education by bringing tokens of culture such as food, national flags, or maps from around the world into the classroom alone. Although these actions promote a sense of multiculturalism, an education that is relative to a diversity of cultures is not necessarily being provided. Culturally Responsive Teaching attempts to bring the various experiences of the student’s cultural home life into the classroom. Schmidt (2005) identifies seven characteristics that must be incorporated into curriculum in order to provide culturally responsive instruction. These characteristics are high expectations,

Upon hearing the word culturally responsive classroom one envisions a class where the teacher “emphasizes a comfortable and academically enriching environment for students for all ethnicities, races, beliefs, and creeds.” (Lynch, Matthew 2011) Yet in reality most classrooms and schools are not culturally responsive in my area. Most schools are doing the best they can to differentiate instruction as well as make modifications and/or accommodations. However, as the number of diverse students rises, it our responsibility to educate ourselves on being culturally responsive.

Culturally Responsive Teaching is a pedagogy that recognizes the importance of including students' cultural references in all aspects of learning (Ladson-Billings, 1994). This approach to teaching encompasses how knowledge is both communicated and perceived by the students. The teacher must have a good relationship with the parents, have high expectations, learn about their students culture, have culturally mediated student-centered instruction, willing to reshape the curriculum, and be a facilitator in order to accomplish this method of teaching. These are key points a teacher must be willing to do if they intend to be an effective teacher especially in a highly culturally diverse area like central

The New York Department of Health and Mental Hygiene adopted rules which aim to repeal and recode the current law, Chapter 23 of Title 24, of the rules of the New York City to specify sanitary inspection procedures in different food service establishments (Chapter 23 of Title 24 of the Rules of the City of New York, 2010). In July 2010, New York City Mayor Bloomberg lunched New York’s Restaurant letter Grading program (NYC Health, 2013). The New York City Health department started requiring restaurants in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx, and Staten Island to post their letter grades that showing their sanitary inspection results to accomplish three goals: First, to inform the people about the restaurants’ inspection result that could

Golden touches upon foreign racisms in chapter seven, and uses effective comparisons to emphasize and elaborate on his mocking tone and the overall purpose. Chapter seven convinces readers that American elite universities are denying the acceptance to most Asian-American and other foreign raced student candidates. University goals are to expand diversity and culture, but only foreign wealthy students from the top boarding schools around the world are being accepted to American colleges, some would suggest because of their money.

In chapter 10, Germany was receiving food from other countries. This is because the disagreements between some countries divided Germany. Joseph Stalin liked the idea of “collectivization.” As a result, many people died due to the lack of food. Mao Zedong did the same thing, and even more people died. Both of them wanted to promote communism, but they ended up killing millions of people. I thought this chapter had a lot of interesting facts like when it talked about Americans feeding the children in Berlin by flying and dropping candy into the area. I had no questions about the chapter.

Chapter7: The New Age and Related Novel Unsupported Therapies (NUSTs) in Mental Health Science poses the discussion on the pseudoscience of the New Age therapies as these method of therapy was popular among pseudoscientist back then as well as still being practice among people in the mental health field. As the term New Age therapies can be defines as an unconventional and mystical practices, the term “novel unsupported therapy” also shows the same definition as it provided insufficient evidence to support their claim or theory in the treatments based on the American Psychological Associations (APA) standards. Interestingly, the chapter emphasize on influence of the New Age therapies in the past decades as the “belief system” was eventually

Teaching requires creating a classroom where all students are able to participate in the learning. Chapter 1 discusses the importance language, expectations, and integration. Chapter 1 introduces the topic of multicultural teaching.

The first step for me to become a culturally responsive teacher is to learn not to judge others. Working with students from diverse backgrounds requires us to question our reactions to families and students. We need to stop judging different as “abnormal” and embrace what the differences can teach us (Rosenberg, Westling, & McLeskey, 2011). Embracing the differences

As an educator it is important to be aware of the various learners in the classroom as well as being able to shift lessons accordingly to adapt to a greater number of students. In addition it is essential that culturally responsive practices is adapted in the classroom in order for all students to have a sense of belonging and are able to participate. For this reason, a teacher must actively use culturally responsive practices to engage students and their families because it helps to develop a relationship and maintain a level of communication. Learning “facts” about different cultures is not enough, it is more important that we make

However, in today’s classroom that is exactly what is expected. In a culturally responsive classroom, effective teaching and learning occur in a culturally supported, learner-centered context, whereby the strengths students bring to school are identified, nurtured, and utilized to promote student achievement (Richards, Brown, Forde, 2007).

There are many factors that play a role in the learning process for every human being. Race, religion, language, socioeconomics, gender, family structure, and disabilities can all affect the ways in which we learn. Educators must take special measures in the delivery of classroom instruction to celebrate the learning and cultural differences of each of their students. As communities and schools continue to grow in diversity, teachers are searching for effective educational programs to accommodate the various learning styles of each student while promoting acceptance of cultural differences throughout the classroom. It no longer suffices to plan educational experiences only for middle-or upper class white learners and then

I. We have read about the connections between critical multicultural education and culturally relevant pedagogy. Discuss how these concepts are aligned and provide two examples from the class texts of how culturally relevant pedagogy is an approach used to provide equitable educational experiences for all students.