Digital Access to Culturally Relevant Curricula

Native and Indigenous students in low SES urban, rural, and reservation areas have the lowest retention-to-graduation rate and college completion rate of any demographic in the United States. The primary contributing factor is lack of culturally relevant curricula in a culturally sustaining pedagogy to present their culture in a positive representation. The second contributing factor is a lack of access to computer and internet resources to foster and bolster online, remote, and distance learning.

Preparing Bilingual Teachers to Enact Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy

Bilingual students and teachers in the U.S. live in a context where linguistic and ethnic minorities are associated with inferiority. Preparing bilingual teachers of color without explicit attention to issues of race, language, and power would maintain and feed the vicious cycle of linguistic hegemony. With the goal of preparing critically conscious future bilingual teachers equipped to enact culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP), the authors centered issues of race, language, and power alongside bilingual instructional methodology and theories of bilingualism in their respective bilingual teacher preparation programs. Drawing on bilingual teacher preparation course material, student reflections, and bilingual teacher candidate interviews, they illustrate how two bilingual teacher preparation programs take two distinct approaches to developing bilingual teachers' critical consciousness and CSP practices. In this way, they outline how bilingual teacher educators can prepare and support bilingual teachers to enact CSP with their K-12 students.

Using a Culturally Responsive Lens in the Revision of a Core Preparation Course

With increasing cultural diversity in schools and in special education, teachers must be prepared to meet the needs of students from diverse backgrounds. In addition to evidence-based practices, culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP) is critical to helping students make meaning of their learning. Therefore, teacher preparation programs must be intentional and explicit in their instruction related to CSP for teacher candidates. We describe a replicable process of course review and revision for the inclusion of CSP with an example from a core course in a special education preservice teacher licensure program. The course, Intersectionality and Disability, is a course in a newly-implemented undergraduate licensure program.

Entering Into the Story: Implications for Emergent Literacy

In this article we explore the ways in which three young children from a non-mainstream cultural group created stories with the assistance of their caregivers and siblings in the social contexts of their homes. We assert that these children’s oral narrations show us important dimensions of early experience with decontextualized content as practiced in their families that may offer suggestions for analysis of culturally sensitive experiences with literacy for all children. The dimensions we highlight are the tangibility of the elements around which the story is created, the interlocutor support children receive for beginning and continuing their stories, and the interaction between the storytelling process and the child’s self-interest. These three dimensions illustrate how children “enter” into stories and storytelling and broaden our understanding for fostering culturally sustaining pedagogy within schools.

Teacher Positioning in Rural Spaces

In this qualitative study, we ask how 40 rural educators of English learners (ELs) culturally position themselves and their students. We obtained data through a cultural autobiography assignment that prompted teachers to describe their interactions and relationships with others. Drawing on both rural and non-rural experiences, teachers established their ability to exercise agency, mediated by individual histories and beliefs and the context of their rural settings. Teachers developed their capacity to reflect on the ways they position themselves toward their ELs, a crucial first step in creating culturally sustaining pedagogy. Implications point to the potential of cultural autobiography as a means to heighten rural teachers’ awareness of how their experiences and interactions nuance their cultural identity. Such reflections can expand notions of culture beyond common social identifiers and enable teachers to forge links with their students that would otherwise not be apparent. We suggest this autobiographical process is particularly important for rural teachers who are new to teaching ELs in their classrooms.

Racial and Language Microaggressions in the School Ecology

The growth trajectory of ethnically and linguistically diverse individuals in the United States, particularly for youth, compels the education system to have urgent awareness of how diverse aspects of culture (e.g., Spanish-speaking, Black Latina student) are implicated in outcomes in American school systems. Students spend a significant amount of time in the school ecology, and this experience plays an important role in their well-being. Diverse ethnic, racial, and linguistic students face significant challenges and are placed at considerable risk by long-observed structural inequities evidenced in society and schools. Teachers must develop the capacity to be culturally sensitive, provide culturally responsive pedagogy, and regularly self-assess for biases implicated in positive academic outcomes for students in kindergarten through Grade 12. Research and practice have suggested that racism and discrimination in the form of racial microaggressions are observed daily in schools and classrooms. This article provides an overview of racial microaggressions in the school context and their damaging effects on students. We provide specific examples of microaggressions that may be observed in the U.S. classroom environment and how schools can serve as a positive intervention point to ameliorate racism, discrimination, and racial and language microaggressions. This comprehensive approach blends theory with practice to support the continued development of cultural humility, culturally sustaining pedagogy, and an equity-responsive climate.

Una Noche de Música: Sustaining Our Students’ Culture

Students in the music classroom are more culturally and linguistically diverse than ever before. Latinx students are the fastest growing population. Often, these students are neglected through deficit-based pedagogical practices with regard to their cultural and linguistic practices; however, other research into asset-based pedagogical practices such as community cultural wealth and culturally sustaining pedagogy can allow for more equitable and just music education. Accessing community cultural wealth with regard to aspirational, navigational, social, resistant, and especially familial and linguistic capital can lead to better outcomes for students. Incorporating a Noche de Música [Night of Music] at a school allows for families to demonstrate their capacity to cocreate music-based and language-based literacies among faculty, students, and their families. This can include culturally sustaining pedagogical practices that lovingly affirm and sustain students’ language, culture, and history through folk songs, folk tales, and multimodal approaches to communication.