Post #8 – Culturally Relevant Pedagogy

What will culturally relevant pedagogy look like, sound like, feel like, in your future classroom? How will you, as a teacher, contribute to the sense of place for your future students?

For me the first piece of culturally relevant pedagogy will be the representation of different cultures, especially the different cultures of my students around my room. This will be things like a variety of anti-bias children’s books, posters, art, important pieces of different cultures, pictures of my students and their families or some representation of the individual children’s cultures and families, making sure my resources are coming from reliable sources/people, having resources showing injustices in our community and society and  many other things. Having these resources and representation is just a start to creating a more welcoming and diverse classroom. I also plan on using the resources in my lessons. I think it is important for the children to see representation of themselves and other cultures around the classroom but also in their assignments and activities. This might look like adapting lesson plans to individualize them to a specific group of students, having family and community members come into the classroom to share about their culture and experiences, teaching more than just the holidays of different cultures because there are so many more aspects to different cultures than it’s holidays, and showing kids the injustices of the world and explaining and discussing the history behind those injustices but also how we can help change them. I want to encourage students to reflect and think critically on the world around them and help empower them to create social change and fight injustices through my use of resources and culturally relevant lessons which Lopez mentions as being the main job of culturally relevant pedagogy.

My understanding of a sense of place is a person’s relationship with the land, space, and places around them so when creating and contributing to the sense of place in my future students I once again think the first step is creating a welcoming and safe environment in my classroom where my students feel comfortable. As I previously mentioned I think this can include lots of representation of your students around your classroom and school. Creating a classroom that your students actually want to be in with flexible seating, better lighting, decorations that your students have helped pick or influence, ect. Letting your students influence parts of the classroom can help them connect to the classroom and feel proud and happy to be there. Utilizing place-based education or the idea that we have so much to learn from the land and places around us will also be beneficial to me in creating a sense of place in my future students. When using place based education students are often outside exploring and connecting with the places. By having them explore, connect with, and learn to appreciate the land and places around them it will hopefully help strengthen their sense of place both in and out of the classroom. 

Readings

Culturally relevant pedagogy and critical literacy in diverse English classrooms: A case study of a secondary English teacher’s activism and agency by Lopez – https://drive.google.com/file/d/1e9OEf6eaRHT3700UhF8L6M7SHbmszLQN/view?usp=sharing 

Placing elementary music education: a case study of a Canadian rural music program by Brook – https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tIYTxgH0xgqeib0hyUHweVZudT9l11su/view?usp=sharing