Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Classroom

Fulbright Distinguished Teachers Award Inquiry Project 2022 Indiana University of Pennsylvania Anu Aarnio

How to see the students and build relationships

Culturally and linguistically responsive teaching

Link to Executive summary (pdf)

Introduction

I believe focusing on building positive relationships in the classroom is key to culturally responsive and inclusive teaching, as a safe environment is a prerequisite to all learning. In the following pages, I will introduce some elements of a culturally and linguistically responsive classroom. Then I will share my reflections on how teachers see their students and build meaningful relationships. My work combines the elements of a personal and professional reflection journal and theoretical background based on the VABBING framework (Sharroky Hollie) and Ready for Rigor -frame (John Hammond). The key findings are presented in the format of two interactive images, designed to give teachers an easily accessible, and engaging way to learn about and reflect on the cultural and linguistic elements of their own classrooms. The format is designed to be "practice first, theory next', so as to give teachers a tool to make their own knowledge visible, to reflect on the things they are already doing to be culturally responsive and to help them refine their vision.

Maya Angelou

"Every person needs a place that is furnished with hope. "

A few steps for

A culturally and linguistically responsive Classroom

Sharroky Hollie

Cultural and linguistic responsiveness is not something that you do, but something that you have in all that you do.

My Journey of Responsiveness

Throughout my Fulbright grant term, I kept a journal. It is a combination of my parental experience, as my kids went to a public school in Pennsylvania with no previous knowledge of the English language, and my experience as a teacher observing elementary classrooms in Indiana and Pittsburgh, PA. This was my primary research.The questions I asked myself:

• Where is the relationship-building happening? Where is it not happening and why?
• How do I see teachers trying to see students? How is it put into routines?
• How do I notice students feeling seen or families being seen?

My secondary research was looking at previous research on culturally responsive teaching, especially the work of John Hammond and Sharroky Hollie. I used the VABBING (Hollie, 2017) and Ready for Rigor -frameworks (Hammond, 2015) to analyze the classroom interactions I observed. Through the following image, you can explore my experience and takeaways.

Reclections on the Importance of

Building relationships

Reflection 1\2

This same deficit thinking or disability lens applies to students with learning differences. My project has led me to wonder whether our definition of cultures in our classrooms should recognize youth culture, gender culture, ethnic culture and a culture of neuro-atypicality. Hammond (2015) talks about the need to shift the school culture to support the intellective capacity building of culturally and linguistically diverse students. I feel we also need to include in this thinking a readiness to adjust our cultural expectations for students with neuro-atypicality. This assertion does not mean lowering expectations, but rather the exact opposite. It means validating and affirming our students, meeting them where they are and teaching them the skills needed to achieve their goal. Hollie (2017) and Hammond (2015) both talk about the importance of the teacher believing that all students are capable of learning and should be given challenging content. For some of our students, the most challenging content is feeling safe enough in the classroom to learn and have the courage to build relationships. This is why as teachers, we need to go into the classroom every morning relationships first.

The time I have spent observing classroom interactions, teaching and school culture in the US and contrasting it with my own teaching experience in Finland, has made me reflect on our varied definitions of diversity and inclusion. Children have culture, ethnicity, language, and learning diversity. These are complimentary to each other, and they all require flexibility from both the teacher and the school as a whole. Hollie (2017) defines becoming a culturally and linguistically responsive teacher as a “journey to responsiveness” (p. 59). I interpret this as meaning that a) building relationships with and among our students is a daily practice which takes time and b) for this relationship-building to happen, we also need to work to recognize and adjust our disability lens actively. Deficit thinking is when teachers or policymakers believe culturally and linguistically diverse students fail in school because of their deficiencies or lack of value awarded to education at home, not because of social inequities, the structure of the education system, or differential treatment in the classroom (Hammond, 2015).

Link to Executive summary (pdf)

Reflection 2\2

To our policymakers and education administrators, I wish relay the real urgency to recognise, what Couch and Towne (2018) aptly describe as the “teacher’s dilemma”. The fact remains that teachers are not given the resources necessary to meet the needs of the students, yet a very high demand is placed upon them (p. 160). Our class sizes have become too big for a teacher to be able to meet the students' individual needs and for our education to be inclusive. If we cannot individualize, we are teaching to the average, collective whole, which is the same as teaching to no one (Couch and Towne, 2018). Looking at the Finnish education system after being given the gift of distance, one strength stands out very clearly. That strength is the well-trained, relationship-building classroom teacher. This teacher spends the majority of the school day with a set group of students, every day, getting to know their strengths, culture, language and learning differences. This teacher works hard to build a classroom community based on acceptance, validation and respect, so that learning can take place. Their students deserve no less, and these teachers deserve proper resources to serve students best.

One of the biggest takeaways for me personally has been to realize how grateful I am to be teaching in the Finnish education system. Whereas many of my fellow Fulbright peers hope to take their learnings and use them to educate other teachers in their home communities, I do not personally feel a pressing need to do this. Instead, this experience has reinforced my thinking that the Finnish school system, and the things we do when it comes to individualizing learning and supporting our students to become active learners, are exactly what we should be doing. In my experience, what I have written here about culturally and linguistically responsive teaching is, in my own experience, already very much implemented in classrooms around Finland every day. So to my fellow teacher-colleagues I wish to say: What you are doing is not easy, but you are doing it very well.

Link to Executive summary (pdf)

Reflection 2\2

To our policymakers and education administrators, I wish relay the real urgency to recognise, what Couch and Towne (2018) aptly describe as the “teacher’s dilemma”. The fact remains that teachers are not given the resources necessary to meet the needs of the students, yet a very high demand is placed upon them (p. 160). Our class sizes have become too big for a teacher to be able to meet the students' individual needs and for our education to be inclusive. If we cannot individualize, we are teaching to the average, collective whole, which is the same as teaching to no one (Couch and Towne, 2018). Looking at the Finnish education system after being given the gift of distance, one strength stands out very clearly. That strength is the well-trained, relationship-building classroom teacher. This teacher spends the majority of the school day with a set group of students, every day, getting to know their strengths, culture, language and learning differences. This teacher works hard to build a classroom community based on acceptance, validation and respect, so that learning can take place. Their students deserve no less, and these teachers deserve proper resources to serve students best.

One of the biggest takeaways for me personally has been to realize how grateful I am to be teaching in the Finnish education system. Whereas many of my fellow Fulbright peers hope to take their learnings and use them to educate other teachers in their home communities, I do not personally feel a pressing need to do this. Instead, this experience has reinforced my thinking that the Finnish school system, and the things we do when it comes to individualizing learning and supporting our students to become active learners, are exactly what we should be doing. In my experience, what I have written here about culturally and linguistically responsive teaching is, in my own experience, already very much implemented in classrooms around Finland every day. So to my fellow teacher-colleagues I wish to say: What you are doing is not easy, but you are doing it very well.

Anu Aarnio is a class teacher from Finland. She has worked as a class teacher in bilingual education for several years and is currently working at Jätkäsaari Comprehensive School in Helsinki. The school specializes in phenomenon-based learning and developing co-teaching. Anu Aarnio holds a Master of Arts (Education) from the University of Helsinki. She is a Fulbright Distinguished Awards in Teaching Grantee at Indiana University of Pennsylvania (2022-2023) and has previously been on the board of Dare to Learn, an international learning festival in rethinking lifelong learning.

About the writer

Anu Aarnio

Love, Bettina. (2020) To confront inequality you must first understand it. The International Educator. April 2020. p. 4. Mercer, C., & Mercer, Ann R. (2001). Teaching students with learning problems (6th ed.). Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Merrill Prentice Hall. Talk given by Professor Timothy Runge on SWPBIS at Fulbright Seminar, Indiana University of Pennsylvania Roskos, Kathleen and Neumann, Susan B. 2011. The Clasroom Environment: First, Last, and Always. The Reading Teacher 65 (2): 110-114. ​Stahl, R. J., “Using “Think-Time” and “Wait-Time” Skillfully in the Classroom,” ERIC Digest, ED370885, pp. 1-6, 1994

References

Image of the classroom: Camille Lemiale & Arthur Krijgsman @ Pexel.com Couch J. D. & Towne J. (2018). Rewiring education: how technology can unlock every student's potential. BenBella Books. Hammond, Z., & Jackson, Y. (2015). Culturally responsive teaching and the brain : Promoting authentic engagement and rigor among culturally and linguistically diverse students.Thousand Oaks, California, Corwin, a SAGE company. Hollie, S. (2017). Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Teaching and Learning (Second Edition). Shell Education, California. Emdin, C., & EBSCOhost. (2016). For white folks who teach in the hood-- and the rest of y'all too : Reality pedagogy and urban education. Beacon Press, Boston. Introduction to PBIS at Brookline Elementary, talk given by Mr. Matthew May, 9.11.2022.

THANK YOU!

WHY

Looking at Walls

The third step Hollie (2017) talks about is de-superficializing, which based on my observations is not as relevant of a problem in Finnish classrooms. Something quite striking to me within the physical space of Pennsylvanian classrooms has been the number of posters, motivational quotes, and general decor in the classrooms. The classrooms I have seen seem very “busy” to my eye, and it makes me wonder if it is a distraction to students’ concentration. De-cluttering and focusing on relevant pedagogical visuals, such as letters and word walls, is important as there is research to show that having these traditional markers visible make significant differences for both early readers and struggling readers (Roskos & Neumann, 2011.)

Hollie (2017) defines a culturally responsive learning environment as “one that conveys respect for every student, notably respect for the knowledge, experiences, and language the students bring to the classroom” (p. 182). Hammond (2015) also warns us that we “too often think of the physical setup of our classroom as being culturally 'neutral' when in reality it is often an extension of the teacher’s worldview or the dominant culture” (p. 19). Hollie (2017) gives a 3 step rule on how to make the physical space of the classroom a more culturally and linguistically inviting learning environment: 1.) De-Blumenbaching: Look at the materials and pictures posted: are they mainstream White, Anglo-Saxon culture? Make the necessary changes. 2.) De-Commercialising: Where the first rule will most likely require an effort on part of the teacher, this one doesn’t. In displaying the students’ work instead of commercially produced material, you are automatically making the classroom more culturally responsive as well as validating their perceptions of cultural identity (p. 183-185).

Building on Hollie’s idea, I added: “Teach me your own cultural greeting” on the greeting poster. You can find it here to use in your classroom.

Looking at Goodbyes

Hollie (2017) suggests incorporating greetings from both home and school cultures into movement activities during instruction (p. 109) I think this is a good idea and in the following paragraph I will share one example of how it can be done in a classroom.The beginning and the end of the day are important moments as they set the mood for learning in the morning and mark the transition from school culture to home culture/youth culture. One of my principles as a teacher has been to connect with each student at least once every day. In the hectic reality of the school day, this is surprisingly hard (it should not be, but it is). The safest way to ensure this connection happens every day is to put it into a routine. In many of my classes, students have enjoyed the tradition of choosing their way of greeting me at the end of the day. It is important to have options that include physical contact and those that do not.