Culturally Relevant Teaching

I read the book "Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Teaching and Learning" by Sharroky Hollie.

I think about using CLRT as a way to create the conditions for equity in classrooms (and thus eliminating achievement disparities).  Here is the insight from Sharroky Hollie in four words: validate, affirm, build and bridge. Validate the student. Affirm their strengths. Build on their strengths. Make a bridge with their strengths to new learning. 

What is culture?

"Culture is the system of shared beliefs, values, customs, behaviors and artifacts that distinguish one group from another. Culture is further defined as what is right, and what is rude. Culture is the way we do things around here." -Edgar Schein

How do we create social learning?

"An additional benefit of social presence, according to Rourke and others (1999), is its ability to instigate, sustain, and support cognitive and affective learning objectives by making group interactions appealing, engaging, and intrinsically rewarding."

Culturally relevant teaching is the intersection of realness, relevance, relationships and rigor. I would like to continue to explore how learning technologies paired with transformed teaching strategies are responsive to each learner. I would love to read others' thoughts on this too!  

I created a slide deck using Haiku Deck to explain the concepts of the book in a visual way.