Culturally Responsive Teaching Rough Draft

Based on what I have experienced from life and from reading “As Soon as She Opened Her Mouth” there are people who use a cultural capital approach and others that use a cultural deficit approach when interacting with others.  Typically people who are of higher power such as government, political leadership, doctors, or just wealthy tend to use cultural capital.  One thing I have learned about the relationship between language, literacy, and power is that they are all interrelated.  A way a person speaks, their discourse communities, and their status all reflect and bounce off each other.

            It’s important for educators of the Appalachian region to understand the relationship that Appalachians have to their homeland because it’s a big part of who they are.  It’s important that teachers reframe from making students feel ashamed of their culture.  In the article, the author states “Again and again we conclude that in developed countries and in third-world countries, learners from impoverished and low-status groups fail to develop as fully and productively literate as compared to learners from sociocultural groups that hold sociopolitical power and favor.” That makes no sense to me at all.

            There are multiple ways that teachers can overcome cultural deficits perspectives of their students. For example, in the Luis Moll research study teachers were asked to abandon their drill-based approach to teaching bilingual students English and to tap into their students interests and find meaningful activities that students could do that pertained to their interests.  One success story from Hilda Angiulo, was that she found out that Construction was part of their discourse community, so she based lessons off of building models, researching vocabulary, and have Construction workers from the community to come in and explain their stories of how construction workers work with numbers, measurements, and problem solve everyday.  “When teachers and schools seek out and use these funds of knowledge, Moll expects there will be rewards: They will have a better chance of helping bilingual and minority children achieve authentic literacy; they will foster a sense of community; and they will bestow a much richer education than most working-class kids enjoy.”

            To be continued…..