Culturally Responsive Differentiated Instructional Strategies

Blog Post # 1

“Culturally Responsive Differentiated Instructional Strategies”

For my first blog post, I discovered the article “Culturally Responsive Differentiated Instructional Strategies,” from the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, Metropolitan Center for Urban Education, written in 2008. The article first starts off by describing the basis of Differentiated Instruction and how it can be accomplished, and also giving the basic Principles of Differentiated Instruction. The main purpose of this article, however, is supporting Differentiated Instruction with all cultures of students, or “Culturally Responsive Pedagogy.” The article gives some interesting statistics of student to teacher ratios. For example, during the 2002-03 school year, nearly 42% of all children in public schools, grades k-12 are students of color, and 10 years later there has not been a significant change in the makeup of the nation’s teachers (most elementary and secondary school teachers are white (87%) and female (74%))(3). The article explains that the problem with this is that since our culture is ultimately how we identify ourselves, “classroom teachers, school administrators, and policymakers carry their cultural experiences and perspectives into their everyday decisions and actions,” (4). The article goes into much more detail on the negative effect this has on students of color and different cultures, but to sum it up in one sentence I would choose, “Many students of color have an understanding of and some have internalized negative images of their race. These negative images, promoted by the larger society, affect how they perform in school,” (4). The article goes on to explain that t is the school’s job to take these negative images these differently cultures students face, reconstruct them, and help them to form a more positive product of self and cultural affirmations, thus leading to more learning. Finally, the ending of the article lists the Seven Building Blocks of Differentiated Instruction: Knowing the Learner, Traits of a Quality Teacher, Quality Curriculum, and Classroom Learning Environment, Flexible Teaching and Learning Time, Instructional Delivery and Best Practices, Assessment/Evaluation/Grading (4).

            This relates to the material we’ve reviewed in class, because we have thoroughly established the importance of teachers to be culturally open-minded to all students. Not only should teachers have an open-mind, they should have experience on relating to those of different identities then their own for effective learning to take place.  It is important of people of different identities to feel “liked” and understood by the teacher and education system, so that they can feel their own self-affirmation and willingness to learn. In summary, it shouldn’t be about WHY they need to learn, but instead feeling their own WANT to learn.

            It was difficult for me to give a brief summary of the article I read because almost every sentence is filled with interesting material to get teacher’s, educator’s, parents, administrators, and others really thinking about how they can improve the learning in ALL children’s lives. I felt I needed to include the many dimensions of this article. Give it a read- you won’t regret it!