Culturally Responsive Teaching Increases Student Engagement

It has been great to hear from some of you about how you integrated things you heard from our convocation speaker Dr. Jennifer Waldeck into your classes. Her presentation was filled with so many things but one of the important topics she covered was how to be culturally responsive with your students. That ties in nicely with today's Faculty Focus article. Culturally Responsive Teaching (CRT) has been defined as a philosophy of education that centers students’ cultural backgrounds as essential to their learning by Gloria Ladson-Billings in 1995. Dr. Gwen Bass and Michael Lawrence-Riddell propose integrating Universal Design for Learning (UDL) with CRT to create "a powerful tool for preparing [students] for today’s professional environment, which increasingly acknowledges diversity as integral to success." They go on to note, "While educators need not be experts on every culture, they should make efforts to ensure that their students’ experience their own learning styles and their own cultures in the teaching and learning process." One of the ways they suggest we can do this is by giving students the opportunity to understand their own identities and to feel that they are honored in the class through identity mapping. They conclude by writing, "Simply providing choice for students in terms of the input of information, or their own output, is a step toward a culturally responsive classroom, as is inherent in the guiding principles of UDL—providing multiple means of representation, expression, and engagement."

Student Success Starts With Communication

If you were able to make the faculty development session yesterday delivered by Dr. Jennifer Waldeck, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. This event occurred because of the support of VCASA Laura Younger, who provided the funding. Speaking of VC Younger, she mentioned that not only did several people stop her on the way out to indicate their pleasure at the quality of the speaker but several of you called her as well. What a great way to kick off the 2020 spring semester. One of the resources referenced by Dr. Waldeck during her talk was an article that appeared in Inside Higher Ed written by Jane E. Dmochowsk. I had posted the link on the Center for Teaching and Learning Enhancement's events calendar but the link was broken and has been repaired. Looking back on the tweets that I sent during yesterday's event, I wanted to share three that stood out in my mind. The first is "inclusion and celebrating diversity builds credibility and promotes engagement." The second is "the fear of communication is very real for some of our students" (this goes to class participation and meeting with you privately). The third is "student to student interaction is critical to their learning experience." I hope you have a terrific semester. If you are looking for ways to get started on the first day of class, here are some things you can try.