October 29th, 2020

Creating Culturally Responsive Learning Experinces

By Olivia Gillespie, Literacy Content Specialist at CDE
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I thought I should follow up Part V with tips for decolonizing our classroom libraries, whether those libraries are in our physical classrooms, online, or a combination of both.

1. How do we ensure students’ exposure to culturally diverse texts that does no perpetuate dominant narratives of people of color or immigrant families?
2. How do we select reading material that promotes equity by design, enabling all students to see themselves and others as equal and their stories as relevant and meaningful? 

 
In no way am I suggesting that any of us are intentionally choosing overt racist or deficit minded reading material for our students to engage with. Nor, am I suggesting that our current reading lists are not relevant and complete with narratives, messages, themes, etc., not worthy of analysis simply because the author, journalist, poet, playwright, biographer, editor, or writer is a member of dominant culture. What I am saying is as ELA/Literacy educators at all levels of our education system, we must become cognizant of the subtle messages that reinforce deficit views of people of color and immigrants. We want our students to feel and know they are valued as citizens of our local and global communities. While we cannot change history, we can however, use history to inform current practices in order to shape the future we want for our students, our colleagues, and our society.
 
The question then becomes, how do we decolonize our classroom libraries?
 
Here are a few things we can begin to use to assess a book’s worthiness to our vast collection of reading materials. The suggestions are based upon the work of Dr. Alfred Tatum, author of Reading for Their Lives: (Re)Building the Textual Lineages of African American Males Students.

1. Does the book go beyond typical themes about characters of color? Avoid caricatures and the reinforcement of stereotypes like “the hoopster” or “fatherless son.” Dr. Tatum says we should ensure that texts offer counter narratives that shows students of color, especially males as problem-solvers, which challenges the “victim mentality” story lines.

 
The problem, according to Dr. Tatum and Zaretta Hammond, is that while there are more diverse books out there, typically there’s a theme. For example, books with African Americans typically revolve around sports (i.e., basketball), civil rights-era activities, or African American historical heroes. There’s an overrepresentation of low-income, urban communities. It’s even more limited for Latinx students. And, let’s not even talk about authentic books at Indigenous/First Nation children or Pacific Islanders students.

1. Are there non-fiction books that have children, adolescents, and/or young adults of color doing everyday things? Too often dominant racial narratives about who’s the smart kid in the book does not include children of color. You also want to check to see if the non-verbal visuals are reinforcing dominant narratives. Remember the definition for text—any media, print or non-print, used to communicate an idea, emotion, or information—can be a speech, a video, a chart or a graph, an infographic, a photograph, a painting. It refers to any communication that ask students to “make meaning” or comprehend a message.  

 

1. Do the children of color look “authentic”? Meaning, do they have varied shades of brown skin and textured hair, or are do they have White/Caucasian features, but with brown skin? The ideal is for students to see authentic representations of themselves and their cultural identities.

 

1. Are the texts, especially fictional stories “enabling”? Dr. Tatum talks about ensuring texts are “enabling” rather than disabling students. This is a way of going deeper with the idea of “mirrors” in the popular “mirrors and windows” frame. So, the text should serve as a road map for being, doing, thinking, and acting in ways that congruent with cultural ways of being and doing

 
An enabling narrative recognizes, honors, and nurtures students’ multiple identities, academic/intellectual, cultural/racial, and personal/social. It shows these identities as integrated in a matter of fact way and common rather than having the high achieving child of color be the exception or characterized as a “nerd” or oddball.
 
The aforementioned are just a few important criteria to use to review books. A HUGE SHOUT OUT to our LIBRARIANS! You are essential, integral, and important contributors to our effort for educational equity in the area of literacy.