Cultural Responsiveness

I thought I would have a little look at this word and what it means. I read a piece from Helen Verney who wrote 'Accelerating Learning Through CulturallyResponsive Teaching Practices'. Helen wrote this as part of her sabbatical year and she had a look and asked staff on their thoughts on being culturally responsive and other aspects around this. What she learned from her study was not really a great surprise to me.
I liked how she explained how cultural responsive can be shown in 3 ways as surface, shallow and deep. Obviously, we ideally want to have a deep understanding of culture. It is important for the teacher herself to have a deep understanding of their own culture.
Schools have a responsibility to connect with the community and to gain more about the cultures they have. Having an understanding of the cultures within the school helps to accelerate the children's learning. Building connections with others in the community helps us to understand where the children are coming from.
An environment that is accepting of others thoughts, beliefs and actions allow students to be themselves and bring their culture to their learning. Which definitely benefits their self-esteem and their learning.

Key points I got from her were that everyone connected to the learner is important and play an important role in educating a child. Teachers knowing themselves and their learners helps us to be culturally responsive. A very important aspect is relationships and this is backed up by Russell Bishop who spoke on Ed Talks Educators talk about learning-A Culturally responsive pedagogy of relations. He talked about some of the same aspects that popped up with Helen Vinery. By allowing children to bring their own experiences to their learning and accepting their ideas and culture helps to improve engagement. Relationships with the children and whanau are very important to improve the children s learning.  Caring for people and creating a learning relationship is paramount for being culturally responsive.