The culturally competent teacher should be able to...

The culturally competent teacher should be able to account for, demonstrate awareness of, and respond to the sociocultural distinctiveness of her or his students, families, and communities when planning for delivering instruction.


I am working in a high school math classroom with a bunch of senioritis-filled seniors. The class I sit in and observe is a Pre-Calculus class. There is not one white student in the class of 10 kids (when everyone is there). Walking the halls of that high school, besides a few teachers, I am the only white person. I hear all the students speaking spanish to each other in the halls, and when they do speak english, they use very vulgar language. The sociocultural characteristics of all the students I have seen at that school are completely different than anyone I have ever gone to school with. All the boys I went to school with never made any comments out loud and pretty much kept to themselves. Whereas the boys in this high school whistle at me and make comments loud and clear as I walk by them. Since I have never experienced this before, I did not know how to handle it. Of course I think of something to say after the fact, when it is already over and done with. I find it very disrespectful, even though it was meant as a compliment, to shout comments at somebody like that when you do not know that person.


In my classroom, there are only a few students from different ethnic backgrounds. Most of them are of spanish descent. One girl in particular who stands out to me is from a country in Africa. The teacher had told me that earlier in the year before I started going, she would sit on the right side of the room with other girls. She was very disruptive and was not doing well in the class, so the teacher moved her across the room and separated her from all her friends. She takes very well to disciplinary actions because of her culture, and her school work highly improved after she was moved across the classroom.


The teacher is loved by all the students, but I would not consider him to "demonstrate awareness of" his students, families, and communities when planning for delivering instruction. He is teaching math, not history or english. He looks for different ways to explain the strategies of solving problems, and looks to me for help if he cannot think of a way to get it through to them. Math is much more simple-minded and much easier to not cross a boundary and have to worry about offending anyone.


One student in particular has alot to offer in this class. The first day that I was there, all the students were not really paying attention, and the teacher had to pry the answers to his questions out of the students. Then he asked a really abstract and hard question, and this boy came out with the best answer. He nailed it on the head and it completely blew my mind. Here I am, thinking these kids do not know anything about Pre-calc, and this student came out with an answer that I would have never come up with myself. Since then, that boy has been questioning things, been enthusiastic about the class, and definitely motivated to learn. This student made me think of Ira Shor and his idea of empowerment because somebody empowered this student. Somebody was there to encourage this student to ask questions, grow as a person, and make a difference in his society. If he stays as passionate about every aspect of his life as he is in that math class, he will go very far in life. He will help strengthen his society and help it grow and change for the better.