Continuing are exploration of asset pedagogies, read the following:
Think about and respond to the following questions by posting in the comments below:
- What are some ways you currently incorporate culturally sustaining pedagogies (CSP) in your courses?
- How might you apply CSP in your open pedagogy assignment?
- From strategy 4 in the anti-racist pedagogy article,
- How do you communicate your pedagogy and values to students?
- What role does critical reflection and/or vulnerability play in the course? How are students guided through the process of critical reflection?
- What do you take away or what resonates for you in the five strategies for anti-racist pedagogy presented in the article?
5 thoughts on “Culturally Sustaining and Anti-racist Pedagogies”
Usually at the beginning of the semester, we find a way to share about what languages we speak at home, and sometimes talk about other cultural or family traditions. Sometimes we use the “Where I’m From” poem as a way of getting to know each other. Sometimes I do an anonymous survey and then share a word cloud or the collected data so that we know more about the group.
I use journaling throughout the semester to provide a way that students can share something about their personal interests and life outside of school. Usually these are private between the students and me, but sometimes there are sections that I ask to share anonymously with the class to start discussions.
When posting the I-Search Assignment on the Openlab, I might add a section in which the students could comment on a question about whether they feel there is cultural bias in the way research is conducted and even in the sources that are considered reliable.
I’ve been thinking of adding a second open pedagogy assignment that involves making a class TikTok account, and each week, the students could vote on one TikTok trend that we would post on our class account. There could be extra credit applied for those who take part. As open pedagogy goes, this would be very open, and it is challenging because of that. I think it could be a good exercise in creating public content for a social media forum that still maintains a somewhat collegiate slant.
From the first class, I make it clear that everyone’s voice matters in our classes. I choose at least one reading that could prompt a discussion about racism. For example, when discussing, “Autobiographical Notes,” by James Baldwin, we have noted how some of the language is uncomfortable, but that it reflected the times.
I noted from the article on culturally sustaining pedagogy the danger of claiming color-blindness, and how this can appear to negate or ignore the experiences of groups who don’t have this privilege.
Almost all of my students are sensitive to issues of inclusivity and they treat each other with respect, regardless of differences of culture, learning, or ability. Mostly, I try to listen to them and help provide a space where they can learn from each other.
Strategy 4 from the article about anti-racist pedagogy resonates most with me. Fostering a compassionate classroom that meets students where they are is an important starting point. Since many of the students are often stressed or rushed, or just pushing through to the end goal of getting their degree, the practices of thinking about the origin of our thinking, and discussing our reactions to course materials can be helpful.
As Yolande, I also ask students to do reflective assignments at the beginning of the semester. For example, I ask them to reflect on a conversation and discuss every element and aspect including language, context, goals, and outcome. The situation they bring very naturally demonstrates elements of their culture and conflict resolution. Then we reflect on what can be done differently and why. These discussions are very exciting as student share different ways to achieve the speaker’s goal and I used this moment to instill curiosity, acceptance, and patience. My observation is that when done with attention to detail and empathy students are very receptive to understanding others and to take on constructive feedback from peers. I like addressing stereotypes, I manage this sensitive topic by being transparent with my experiences as a stereotype user as well as being a victim of stereotypes. I find students to engage in conversations about other cultures’ differences with ease. I am thinking now of adding to this assignment their communities somehow. Open to any ideas on how to make the conversation expandable.
I have an exercise for values and how values cross and we discuss how we handle the tension of choosing between two important things.
I think I do and am the most connected with the 3rd anti-racist pedagogy Address Curricular Gaps with Intentional Course Design. This is done three my storytelling exercise where I encourage racial and childhood stories to be shared.
I must admit, I LOVED both readings! Culturally sustaining pedagogies complement anti-racist pedagogies and vice versa, as their goal is to strengthen the cultural identities, languages, and ways of knowing of diverse groups of students, while consciously fighting multifaceted racism, marginalization, and/or underhanded discrimination. As an educator in social and political sciences, fortunately my courses offer plenty of opportunities to recognize these problems and encourage conversations around cultural diversity.
For example, when we discuss the third branch of government, the Judicial branch, in my American Government course, I prompt students to compare intermediate scrutiny and strict scrutiny as legal standards of review that courts apply in discrimination cases. To explain a bit more, discrimination based on sex and gender is frequently examined with intermediate scrutiny, while strict scrutiny is the legal standard for reviewing discrimination based on race, ethnicity, or religion. Is this fair? It’s a question I often ask students. According to Larry Ferlazzo, students’ ways of being should be seen as facets of students’ selves that must be centered meaningfully in classroom learning, across units and projects. In this regard, analyzing the courts’ legal standards in reviewing discrimination cases, must be seen and deliberated through the students’ individualized lenses and experiential knowledges. As a white, cis-gender male, I have little to offer in contextualizing these legal standards in discrimination cases. These aspects that constitute my positionality inevitably hinder my capacity to speak from a position of authority. My perspective is unavoidably limited. As an immigrant, however, I am in a better position of offering perhaps more contextualized knowledge that might be familiar, or not necessarily so, for the students.
Reflecting on strategy 4 in the anti-racist pedagogy article, I would say that encouraging and embracing difficult conversations often create an individualized feeling of vulnerability to students and, hopefully, a shared sense of compassion that comes through an explicitly anti-racist framework.
What really resonates for me in the five strategies is that self-education must be a constant process in developing my teaching strategies, while acknowledging trauma, interrogating my own positionality, and identifying gaps of knowledge or better yet unconscious biases. It is a process that I only have the power to initiate, out of a conscious desire and decision to overcome monolithic or static approaches in passing knowledge. The conscious and unconscious impact of this decision cannot be underestimated.
I have enjoyed the Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies material for some time now whereas this is the first time I’ve encountered the Kendi material overtly though I’m aware of it. hooks I was given in grad school.
What strikes me is how differently it resonates and works rhetorically in different situations/circumstances. It strikes me that CUNY, and especially BMCC, is already asset-rich when it comes to handling these areas of pedagogy. We have a lot of folks coming from marginalized groups, and we have a lot of folks who are engaged in community outreach and development. For me, integrating what is termed CSP means a commitment to two principles: 1. Individualizing learning; and 2. valuing multiculturalism. That means an openness to learning about people and cultures and an overwhelming interest in doing so. It also means being willing to adapt and even solicit cultural knowledge when appropriate. CUNY students also often seek meta-awareness and knowledge about the expectations of, for instance, professional and work cultures they may wish to enter. Ironically, educators and administrators often have difficulty negotiating and communicating competing perspectives. Even as we may be trading in old chauvinisms, we may fail students who wish to gain some insight into a specific imagined perspective we may only know through brief acquaintance ourselves. Individualized learning and asset-sharing helps us to provide thoughtful ways of mediating these expectations in ways that blanket policies can’t. As a teacher, it may sometimes be useful to model one’s own grappling with issues of identity and culture, but I think it should be done in a thoughtful and measured way so as not to center oneself in the classroom. For this reason, I have some blocks with the second article, which seems to me to mystify or overly ennoble some of the most basic and essential work we all do. It’s unclear whether the resistance to antiracist pedagogy they describe refers to adolescent or blinkered behavior in general, only when related to notions of inequality or race, or some response to a particular jargon-rich formulation of pedagogy or ideology, the details of which remain somewhat unclear. I like the idea of “meeting people where they are” but a more fruitful expression of this seems to me to be embedded in the ideas of open pedagogy rather than establishing a new regime of specifications. Again, our position as a CUNY school with a diverse population may put us at a relative advantage compared even with elite institutions.
By informing students ahead of time through the posting of the course syllabus informing students of their contribution and participation:
Lectures and class discussions as well as on-campus experiential business events are based on the materials found in the Learning Resources. As such, students will be expected to read the assigned chapters before the class for which that material is discussed. I will also inform students to be prepared to be called upon to answer questions and discuss their ideas.
Since the Intro to Business course is planned as an experiential learning course, students will be reminded that neither attendance nor disruptive behavior or incessant questioning amount to the same thing as active participation, and penalties can be assigned.
Attendance/participation in this course is an important part of the learning experience, since much of the materials we cover in class through lectures and exercises cannot be made up through reading materials and, therefore, the materials are essentially lost.
Further, if students are not attending class meetings, they cannot contribute to the learning experience in the class. A set of questions will be posted for students to respond to on BB for responses and reflections on business and marketing plans. For weeks where there are no questions, students will post a general reflection and feedback on the course learning resources or topic for that week to their colleagues.