CLRT Topic 3.5 - Key Ideas and Questions

These key ideas and questions are designed to support you as you engage in the practice of culturally and linguistically responsive teaching.

Cultural Awareness and Cultural Competence

• The United States has individualism as its deep national cultural archetype, while many migratory students have collectivism as their cultural archetype.
• What opportunities can I create today to incorporate aspects of the deeper levels of our students’ and families’ cultures from an asset-orientation?
  

Neuroscience and Implications for Learning

• Zaretta Hammond’s computer metaphor: The physical structures of the brain are its hardware, while a person’s cultural understandings are the software they use to interpret the world.
• What opportunities can I create today to incorporate aspects of the deeper levels of our students’ and families’ cultures from an asset orientation?
  

Social–Emotional Learning (SEL)

• Warm, positive interactions and strong, trusting relationships are the foundation for learning.
• What opportunities can I create today to support students in five SEL outcomes: relationships, self-regulation, intrinsic motivation, self-concept, and critical thinking?
  

Critical Consciousness

• Within my sphere of influence, what will I do today to be aware of and interrupt inequitable practices at my site and beyond?
• Have I taken the opportunity to listen to my students and their families today? How am I building strong, trusting relationships?
• How am I critically examining my own assumptions?

Building Equitable Systems

• How have I modeled and advocated for asset-orientation within my school or office?
• What opportunities can I create within my school or county to examine student disproportionality and work to understand how embedded beliefs and practices are inadvertently contributing to disproportionality?
• How have I prioritized student and family voices in my systems change efforts?