Connecting to Differentiation and Culturally Responsive Teaching

Freedom Writers Clip

Connect this clip to the themes of differentiation and culturally responsive teaching.

Themes

Make curriculum relevant to the students' lives
Make a connection with your students
Students are diverse learners with diverse needs

TED Talks

Are you here to fix what is broken?

Differentiation

Quick Write

What is the purpose of differentiation? How does differentiation relate to the achievement gap, ESL learners and special education?

Future Teachers

As future teachers, you should be thinking constantly about what differentiation is going to look like in your classroom. You should know how you plan to collect data on your students in order to make informed decisions while planning. The below website has veteran teachers explaining what differentiation looks like in their classrooms.

Differentiation can look like...

Tolerance.org


Future Classrooms

I will utilize __________________________ in my classroom. This will look like ________________.

Gardner's Multiple Intelligence Theory

It is not a secret that people learn at different levels and in different ways. Dr. Howard Gardner captured this concept in 1983 when he developed his Multiple Intelligence Theory.

Please go to the attached website to find out more information about the MI Theory.

MI Theory

Teaching African American and Latino Males and Involving the Community

Quick Write

Respond in detail to the below writing prompt.

Is it the teacher's responsibility to engage with the community of the students that he/she is teaching?

Community Involvement Activity

Develop a plan of action for the below challenges to involving the community. You are going to need to visually represent your plan and explain it to the class. 

Group 1 - You are teachers in a building where there is little to no parental involvement. Your principal has asked you to figure out a way to communicate with parents regularly and get them to see themselves as partners in their children's education.

Group 2 - You are a team of teachers in the Kansas City, MO area. Your principal has chosen you to develop a field trip that will involve students in the artistic and cultural community of Kansas City. 

Group 3 - You are a team of teachers in Kansas City, MO. Your principal would like you to develop a service initiative to get your students to give back to their community. 

Group 4 - Your dean has requested that you choose some high achieving students to go into high school's in the area to mentor students about what they must do to be successful in college.

Group 5 - You are teachers in Kansas City, MO. Your principal has requested that you come up with a mentoring program for boys, especially Black and Latino boys, that will help them be successful academically and behaviorally.

Discussion Preparation

You have 10 minutes to organize your thinking. Please plan to share a passage from each of the readings that have meaning for you. Skim over the reading so that you are prepared to respond to your group member's passages as well. 

Last Word Protocol

1. Tell your group where to find the passage you've chosen. Read your passage. Do not make comments or explain why you chose your passage at this time.

2. Each group member has 1 minute each to respond to your passage.

3. You have the last word. You will now explain in 2 minutes, your reasoning for choosing your passage and respond to your group member's comments. 

Welcome to Culturally Responsive Teaching

In order to have discussions about race, a group of individuals must first determine how to create a safe environment free of fear and ridicule about one's views. The space inside conversations is limited and it must be used in a way that helps the individuals embarking on the journey to grow and be open to new and conflicting ideas.

In this course, we will figure out how to have difficult conversations about race and equality in order to determine the best way to provide culturally responsive and relevant teaching to our students.

I welcome you to join me on this journey of discovery. It will be an adventure with lots of bumps and blind spots, but we will make it through together.

In our first class, we will begin reflecting on our own experiences by reading some excerpts from the below article. We will then have our first courageous conversation.

Hopefully we will all make it out without too many bruises so that we can come to an agreement on some norms for our course.

Conversations About Race Need To Be Fearless: An interview with Glenn Singleton