How to Build a Culturally Responsive Community of Writers
In Part One, Jacquleyn Fabian, Marina Rodriguez, Stephanie Smith Budhai,
Ph.D., and Jennifer Yoo-Brannon shared their responses.
Jacquleyn, Marina, Stephanie, and Jennifer were also guests on my 10-minute
BAM! Radio Show. You can also find a list of, and links to, previous shows
here.
Gholdy Muhammad is an associate professor of literacy, language and culture at
the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her scholarship has appeared in leading
educational journals and books. Muhammad was named one of the top 2022 RHSU
Edu-Scholar Public Influencer of Educational Practice and Policy. She is the
author of the best-selling book, Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for
Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy (Scholastic):
Years ago, as an English/language arts educator, I stopped referring to myself
as a writing teacher; instead, I was just simply a writer—an English/language
artist. Like Toni Cade Bambara and other genius authors, writing was my work
in the world—my contribution to art and social transformation. And as a writer
and an artist-educator, I had one simple goal in the classroom—to create a
space where we would become a community of writers—teaching and learning from
one another. Our goal was to WRITE! (Writing to Respond to our Identities, our
Times, and our Excellence).
Traditionally, I have observed English/language arts and writing classrooms
give empty prompts to students, neglecting to teach writing using
intellectually grounded literature or culturally responsive approaches.
Students would consequently disengage or adopt a disdain for writing.
While many classrooms across the U.S. center just the first of these, the
three pillars collectively can create rigorous and invigorating learning
experiences. Culturally responsive education (CRE) is more than just writing
prompts related to cultural topics. Nor is CRE merely having students read
multicultural text. In addition to representation of cultural topics and
texts, CRE must be explicit in the learning objectives, strategies/pedagogical
practices, and assessments. Often, educators believe, the mere presence of
something cultural or identity-centered is enough.
In my own work, I have built upon these three pillars for a practical model of
culturally and historically responsive education (CHRE), diving deep into the
practices of Black ancestors who have given us five pursuits for teaching and
learning that can be used in the English/language classroom. They offered the
importance of identity (writing to understand who students are and exploring
the lives of diverse humans); skills (writing to learn ELA skills needed
across life); intellect (writing to research and explore new knowledge);
criticality, (writing to name, understand, question, and disrupt injustices
and inequities); and joy (writing to understand and experience beauty in
humanity).
CHRE calls for both responsiveness and responsibility to the needs of our
world and the needs of our students. To write, our students need to read—not
just print and multimodal text but also to read the self and the world—the
joys, genius, and injustices. CHRE centers youth voices and perspectives,
allowing them to see their positionalities, making sense of who they are and
whose they are. Before teaching the five pursuits, there are key elements of a
CHRE English classroom which include:
Identity: Who am I as a writer? What have I written in the past? What do I
enjoy writing about? What aspects are needed in my environment to help me to
write?
Skills: How do I cultivate my writing skills, mechanics, and writing
proficiencies? Which skills do I excel in and which need polishing?
Intellectualism: What genres of writing have I learned (examples—short
stories, letters, protest poetry, journaling, social media posts)? What do I
know about these genres? What are the histories of these genres? What topics
do I want to write about?
Criticality: How can my pen be used to advance humanity and give voice to
injustices? What is the purpose and power of my pen? What requires the urgency
of my pen?
Joy: How can my pen be used to share happiness, beauty, truth, aesthetics, and
social change to humanity?
These questions are a productive starting place to begin to develop CHRE
thinking and practice in the English classroom. The pursuits become motion and
action, moving toward Toni Cade Bambara’s example of using writing to resist
and recast a better future—to do the work and to participate in transforming
the world to be a better dwelling for all of us.
Marie Moreno, Ed.D., has over 20 years of experience, specializing in newcomer
and second-language acquisition. She is passionate about refugee and immigrant
education by focusing on social and emotional needs and newcomer programming:
Newcomer classrooms/schools can be the most diverse, with many cultures and
languages represented. Transforming your classroom to be culturally responsive
is not a “one thing” or “one event.” It’s a process that will take time with
consistent implementation. Starting at the beginning of the year, develop a
classroom flag, a classroom poster, or a tangible object that the class
(collectively) will contribute their heritage to this object or product. For
example, in my classroom, I had students representing nine countries, and the
students were very different, but they all had one thing in common: No one had
any English skills. The first thing you must establish is a place of trust. I
start with myself.
Who is your teacher? Does she have children? What are my hobbies? Students
need to see that teachers are humans, too. Make this a lesson at the beginning
of the year and build literacy using sentence stems. The goal is to make the
students understand who their teacher is as a person and lower any barriers or
reservations they may have—especially if they had a bad experience with adults
in their home country. The next day, you have the same experience with “self.”
Each student will complete an activity describing their background. What
“gifts” do they bring to the classroom? What are their beliefs and cultures?
Have students share using sentence stems. This activity (usually the second
day of school) serves three purposes: (1) The teacher is learning each
student’s background; (2) the students are learning each student’s
contribution to the classroom; and (3) a product will be created representing
the collective responses of everyone in the room. That product is then
displayed in the classroom throughout the year. The teacher has collected
information to use for the rest of the year from this one activity.
Independent reading practice is essential to building literacy. With the
information I gathered from students, I would ensure I had books and articles
to read for students to complete their assignments. Don’t also forget to
include choice. For example, I had books about Guatemala traditions, Arabic
food, pyramids in Egypt, or African art. During independent reading practice,
a student can complete one of three assignments. A student can (1) create a
trifold or flyer of the information they learned, (2) complete a T-Chart with
what I knew/what I did not know, or (3) write a book review. I have done this
activity many times throughout the year. Change the books, provide additional
resources, or have other materials that will generate conversations. The goal
is for students to learn from each other and appreciate cultures in the
classroom.
This activity builds a classroom of mutual respect and is culturally
responsive to all students in the school. I have found that students will
appreciate one another and even report bullying from others because they have
a sense of responsibility and accountability to each other. When a new student
enrolls in our classrooms, I love to hear students ask questions about their
backgrounds because they feel they are experts now.
