THE DNA OF TEACHING:

Recently, Teaching Lab embarked on a learning and exploration journey to bring a more explicit focus on Culturally Responsive and Sustaining Education (hereafter referred to as CRSE) into the professional learning programming we create and deliver across the nation. We learned with and from teachers, school leaders, and district and state education agency leaders. Our own personal experiences as students in our nation’s schools also informed our work, as Dr. Vaishali Joshi, Senior Director, Impact & Innovations, reflected:

“[During my own K-12 experience as a student,] I can remember and consider all the ways I felt like an ‘other’ or an outsider and just longed to have my identity celebrated in a way that was not touristy — but rather to engage in learning that honored deeply who I am.”

We aimed to leverage the expertise and knowledge of CRSE researchers and scholars to support educators in understanding how to integrate CRSE into their instructional and leadership practices — in their use of high-quality instructional materials and associated teacher professional learning. The ultimate goal of this endeavor was simple, yet lofty:

Stop harming students and create classroom environments where all students thrive and receive joyful and rigorous instruction in identity-affirming spaces.

What is CRSE?

The term CRSE represents a rigorous field of theory, study, and practices. In short, scholars agree that effective teaching combines academically rigorous content; social, emotional, and cognitive development; and culturally responsive practices (Ladson-Billings 1995; Gay 2002; Hammond 2016). 

Scholar Geneva Gay continues to explain that it is: "...using the cultural characteristics, experiences, and perspectives of ethnically diverse students as conduits for teaching them more effectively.” (Gay 2002, 106)

At Teaching Lab, we continuously revere and study the original scholars of CRSE, while also referencing the work of more recent researchers and practitioners, like Zaretta Hammond. For the purposes of our original learning agenda, we based our work on Hammond’s view of Culturally Responsive Teaching as a means and approach for “building brain power” and encompassing the social-emotional, relational, and cognitive aspects of teaching and learning. She states that Culturally Responsive Teaching is:

”An educator’s ability to recognize students’ cultural displays of learning and meaning making and respond positively and constructively with teaching moves that use cultural knowledge as a scaffold to connect what the student knows to new concepts and content in order to promote effective information processing. All the while, the educator understands the importance of being in relationship and having a social-emotional connection to the student in order to create a safe space for learning.” (Hammond 2015, 15)

We began with this overarching definition to drive our work because: 1) its inherent connections to learning science and 2) academic content, cultural responsiveness, social-emotional development, and building socio-political consciousness are tightly interwoven. 

It reflects a profound belief we hold at Teaching Lab:

Any student can learn anything when their cultural and linguistic identities are viewed as funds of knowledge and assets that can aid in the process of learning.

Enacting this definition requires us to critically understand and subsequently disrupt patterns of harm our country has inflicted on those most marginalized — particularly the communities of color that cascade through our education systems. In our work, we have come to understand and name that:

• Historically, curricula and instruction were deemed “high-quality” without considering culturally responsive criteria like student identity, culture, language assets, etc.

• Instructional materials and the associated supports we provide through professional learning need to be interrogated, supplemented, and, sometimes, completely revised to ensure all students can bring their unique experiences to learning. Teachers can and should honor and leverage these and students’ identities to support intellectual and emotional development.

• To remove barriers for all students to succeed, all educators must acknowledge the ways a history of white supremacy (Okun 1999, 2021) has perpetuated inequities in our education system, as well as confront their individual and collective roles in perpetuating a harmful dominant culture (Love 2019).

With these beliefs at the forefront, we began to look at the ways high-quality instructional materials and aligned professional learning contribute to–and perpetuate–white supremacy and racism so we could dismantle dominant conceptions of quality, redesign our professional learning, and ultimately, redefine quality. 

This is because, as Tara McDonald, Partnerships Manager at Teaching Lab states: 

“CRSE needs to be at the heart of what we do. We can’t have equitable education without Culturally Responsive and Sustaining Education.” 

Download the PDF to learn more about what Teaching Lab did to enact these values and make progress against these goals: