All teachers know that good instruction has essential moves that are refined through lesson planning. A good lesson plan is like a blueprint for building a house. You get to work out all the details on paper for how you’re going to activate learning in real time.

Unfortunately, in our time crunched days, we often don’t have the opportunity for deep design. Instead, too often lesson planning focuses on what activities we are planning to do and what materials we are planning on using and leaves out the student. Instead the students are passive actors going through the motions of the activities.

Too many lesson plans look more like meeting agendas – time and activities – than a blueprint for facilitating students to higher levels of learning.

In contrast, lesson design and unit planning for equitable outcomes has a backbone structure that centers on the student as the unit of change. It plans for helping the student develop the skills and dispositions that would allow them to turn inert information into usable knowledge.

Before we can use culturally responsive lesson design methods effectively, we have to understand the core components – and what makes something truly “culturally responsive” so we don’t fall into the “food, fabric, and festivals” trap.