Know Your Students

Know Your Students

Introduction

            Having already gone through many education classes, I realize the importance of having a “tool box” full of teaching strategies to use with students. This is crucial for all teachers, no matter where they are teaching. However, we run into some danger when we take the strategies we are taught and assume that the way we teach them will work for every student we will have. The first and most important rule of learning how to become a culturally responsive teacher is to know your student.

            If you are reading this handbook, then you are concerned with being a culturally responsive teacher, and you believe there is some degree of importance to this. Even if you plan to teach only in the United States, no matter where you teach, there will always be a diverse student population. Your job is to learn their needs and teach according to those individual needs. This section will give you a better grasp of how to do that.

We can break this section down into 3 categories:

1. Understanding your students’ cultures
2. Understanding your students’ interests
3. Understanding your students’ needs

Knowing about your students’ cultures, interests, and needs will allow you to teach them effectively. In the next three sections, we will be referencing a book by Lisa Delpit, Other People’s Children, Cultural Conflict in the Classroom.

Understanding Your Students’ Cultures

• Know the Culture of your Students

            Knowing about the cultural backgrounds of your students allows you to better understand how to meet their academic needs. Investing and learning about the different cultures of your students is important. One of the best ways to do this is asking questions of your students and their parents. Delpit states, “The question is not necessarily how to create the perfect ‘culturally matched’ learning situation for each ethnic group, but rather how to recognize when there is a problem for a particular child and how to seek its cause in the most broadly conceived fashion” (p. 167). You must know the cultures your students come from to better understand their individual needs.

• Understand the Culture of Power.

            An important part of understanding culture in general is being aware of the underlying culture of power that exists in our world. The culture of power is dominated by those who know how to succeed in the professional world, typically upper and middle-class white people. Teachers must be aware of this power structure and know how it affects their students. Teachers must make students aware of this unfortunate reality and teach them how to succeed in this culture. Students of poverty and students of color should be encouraged to embrace their own cultures, but they should also be made aware of the culture of power, because they are the ones who are most negatively affected by it (pp. 27-28).

• Direct vs. Indirect Communication

            Many children who come from the working class are familiar with direct forms of communication. Therefore, it is important for teachers to be direct in their communication with these students, so there is clear communication and no misunderstandings. If you know your students and their cultural background, you will understand which students need firm, direct communication and which students need more indirect communication (pp. 34-36).

• Language

            Students will come to the classroom with many different discourses. Teachers must value these languages represented while also teaching the students professional dialect. There must be a balance of both; if this is neglected, students will either be discouraged or be unsuccessful. In short, “teachers need to support the language that students bring to school, provide them input from an additional code, and give them the opportunity to use the new code in a nonthreatening, real communicative context” (p. 53).

• Human Connectedness

            Communities of color tend to highly value human connectedness much more than the white, middle-class community (p. 95). Therefore, teachers must learn to understand the value placed on relationships and respect this cultural value. One way to do this is to learn more about this value. Teachers must seek the wisdom and advice of parents and other adults who are a part of the culture and understand the cultural values. This allows teachers to better understand the cultural values they are striving to understand and respect (p. 102).

• Positive portrayal in the classroom

            Teachers are responsible for providing rich literature for their classrooms that depict a positive portray al of people of color. If they are going to display posters around the classroom, those should also represent people from various cultural backgrounds in a positive light. This is of the utmost importance. As Delpit puts it, “The problems we see exhibited in school by African-American children and children of other oppressed minorities can be traced to this lack of curriculum in which they can find represented the intellectual achievements of people who look like themselves” (p. 177).

Understanding Your Students’ Interests

• Students’ lives

            As one teaching proverb says, “Know thy students.” Understanding how to reach students academically starts with knowing your students and being in touch with their interests. Once you are familiar with the interests of your students, you will be able to make the curriculum applicable to their lives, making instruction much more meaningful for them. One example of this would be rewriting a problem so that it is in “terms relevant to the student’s life” (p. 65).

• The Importance of Motivation

            It should come as no surprise that students will not be motivated unless the curriculum reflects their interests, and learning will not take place unless the students are motivated. When students are motivated to learn, the quality of their work will reflect what they are actually capable of doing, which is often (and unfortunately) far above what is expected of them. Therefore, teachers must find ways to motivate their students. Delpit gives the example of allowing students to write what they are interested in and seeing their creativity and talent in that writing. “I wonder how many… teachers know that their black students are prolific and ‘fluent’ writers of rap songs. I wonder how many teachers realize the verbal creativity and fluency black kids express every day on the playgrounds of America as they devise new insults, new jump-roping chants and new cheers” (p. 17). Teachers cannot be ignorant of their students’ interests or they will fail to motivate them; if the students are not motivated, then, more than likely, learning will not take place.

Understanding Your Students’ Needs

• Thinking Critically and Creatively

            Teachers must teach their students how to be critical and creative thinkers. While they do need to be taught specific skills, they also need to know how to think for themselves. “Students need technical skills to open doors, but they need to be able to think critically and creatively to participate in meaningful and potentially liberating work inside those doors” (p. 19).

• Balance

            It is important to balance the types of instruction used in order to meet the needs of all students. One example of this is balancing skills and the writing process. Delpit suggests, “There is much to be gained from the interaction of the two orientations and that advocates of both approaches have something to say to each other” (p. 20). This is why a balance of multiple approaches to instruction is vital in the classroom.

• Knowing What They Need

            Delpit quotes one teacher who states about her African-American students, “What they need are the skills that will get them into college” (p. 16). This is in response to another teacher who favored a whole language approach to reading and suggests working on fluency instead of skills. However, it is clear that these students need to learn the reading skills necessary to pass the SAT and college degrees. Teachers must be in tune with the academic needs of their students so that they can meet those needs with the proper instruction.

• Harmonizing with the World

            Students of color need to know that their heritages, cultures, languages, and customs are valuable and they should not leave those rich roots. They must also be taught how to survive in the professional world, made up mostly of middle-class white citizens. Taking the example of language. Some progressive white teachers refuse to criticize the writing of students of color, thinking they are helping them to “find their voice.” What teachers should be saying is, “I’ve heard your song loud and clear. Now I want to teach you to harmonize with the rest of the world” (p. 18). It is important to teach students the necessary skills they need in order to succeed in the professional world.

Summary

            “Rather than view these diverse students as problems, we can view them instead as resources who can help all of us learn what it feels like to move between cultures and language varieties” (p. 69). As teachers, we must respect our students; we must learn from them and their experiences. In order to do this, we have to ask questions and gain insight into our students’ lives and cultures. “It is impossible to create a model for the good teacher without taking issues of culture and community context into account” (p. 37). To be culturally responsive, teachers need to be open, vulnerable, and willing to learn.

            Once the questions are asked, we begin the process of really knowing our students. “If we know the intellectual legacies of our students, we will gain insight into how to teach them” (p. 181). This is the foundation of culturally responsive teaching. We need to take steps toward knowing each student personally. Next to that, we must know our students’ potential. “When teachers do not understand the potential of the students they teach, they will underteach them no matter what the methodology” (p. 175). “Underteaching” students is detrimental to their academic success. It is essential for all teachers to first believe in their students and next to hold them to the standard of the potential you see in them; you will know their potential when you know them personally. Everything boils down to the fact that teachers must know their students, and their teaching will reflect that knowledge, being effective for each student.