For most educators, there is confusion about how we bring culture to the classroom.  The result is that our effort can come off as superficial to students and ultimately, not helpful to diverse students’ connection or cognition.

When we are at the DEI educator level, we usually equate “culture” with multiculturalism. Or we focus on “inclusion” and want to make students feel welcome by doing the “It’s a Small World” thing in our classroom or across the school.

That’s a very narrow view of culture.  

Too many educators are winging it when it comes to explaining how culture is connected to learning — or simply why it matters. 

The first step in building our individual and collective capacity, as culturally responsive educators, to bring culture into the classroom in effective ways for authentic purposes, is to begin to articulate what it is and what it isn’t.

So in this lesson we are going to begin to shift our mental model about what culture is and what it isn’t.

Remember, this isn’t a “one and done” lesson on culture. This is a foundational concept and practice that will influence how we create intellectually-safe learning environments and how we design powerful instructional tools to help students accelerate their learning later on in this PLC.