It has been over 3 years since I last posted on this blog, and quite a few things have changed. I am now in grad school and working towards getting my graduate's degree in English Education. Perhaps unsurprisingly, courses in the grad program call for me to get back on the blog center. With this short introduction, I start my process yet again to unravel the many tenants of teaching, learning, and pedagogy.
Before reading the Winn and Johnson chapter 2, I never placed all the different types of elements involved in culturally relevant pedagogy (crp). I guess I just imagined crp as a natural content movement when one enters a teaching state of "flow", as Csikszentmihalyi might claim. However, Winn and Johnson really situate crp realistic and feasible terms that can help shape a classroom using it. Those terms being "academic success", "cultural competence", and "critical consciousness."
LINK ALERT: http://www.teachingexpertise.com/articles/mihaly-csikszentmihalyis-theory-of-flow-1674
^ I found this website while looking up how to spell Csikszentmihalyi. It seems like a really good website that makes educational theories more accessible.
For "cultural competence" and "critical consciousness", I tend to agree with all the points laid out. In specific, I appriciate how crp asks students to gain confidence about their cultures they live in by inviting those cultures in the space. Winn and Johnson put it best when they said that by this token, "learning happens as a result of, rather than in spite of, their presence." Additionally, when students gain a sense of their cultures being relevant, then they are more likely to evaluate it with a greater "critical consciousness." The process is completely tied up in each step connecting to the others. In a way, crp has it's own kind of "flow."
This begs one to ask though if these terms are more like steps than elements present in crp? Does one need to establish cultural competence before pulling out students' "critical consciousness"? Do both of these steps require students to feel "academic success" first? This will be something I pay attention to as I start to employ more crp in my pedagogy.
I had a lot to think about when I read the section on "academic success" in the crp break down. Now I totally agree with Winn and Johnson in their evaluation of hostile classroom spaces that superimpose a set of rules and guidelines that tend to hold down students rather than give them a place to have their ideas heard. By evaluating the standards of assessment and merging them with a students' own knowledge, one can hope to deconstruct the rigid evaluations in classic classroom spaces. Being said, I still think there needs to be some kind of standards to piggy back off of crp. I know that Winn and Johnson are not saying that one should give away "academic success", but I could easily see myself reading it that way. To me, this is done the best in two different ways. First, by asking students to set their own standards of success means to give them agency over the dynamics of the space. The other way is to use their own cultural stand posts and allow them to view the prompts and topics in their unique way.
Additional Links:
I found this video when looking for crp based activities. It isn't a complex activity, but seems to hit the bases well for all the part of crp. My favorite part is the fact that all involved in the class seem to be participating to make this "meta"-ish list.
This is one of my favorite moments from one of my favorite shows: Parks and Recreation. Ron is situating her own schemas of knowledge into a understandable metaphor for teaching complex dynamics of our taxation system. Albeit a bit too simplistic, this example shows off how culturally relevant teaching can take shape with many different topics.
