Cultural Competence
Design curriculum and experiences that represent, elevate, honor, and integrate students' cultural and linguistic backgrounds and cultural ways of being.
CARING AND CONNECTED COMMUNITIES
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In order to nurture cultural competence, educators can listen to and learn about the lived experiences of students. Compassionate and courageous curiosity is essential to knowing young people well enough to integrate identity and foster belonging. Teachers discussed various ways they do this such as, “Anything Letters,” and “Community Walks” through the neighborhoods. You can use the Knowing Students in 4 Dimensions Empathy Interview to learn more about your students and leverage that knowledge into your culturally responsive-sustaining classroom.
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What did you learn from your empathy interviews?
How will what you learned impact your curriculum design and help young people feel seen in your classroom?
What are other ways you can support young people to learn more about themselves and others?
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To learn more about the “why” behind nurturing cultural competence read Curriculum as Window and Mirror. To get more ideas for what to try in your classroom check out How Schools and Teachers Can Get Better at Cultural Competence, Rehumanizing Mathematics for Black, Indigenous, and Latinx Students, and Science in the City.
Cultural Competence In Practice
Visit a High Tech Chula Vista Elementary School Exhibition: "Radical Self-Love".
This year-long project started with a semester of exploring the many parts of student identities, with the goal of allowing the students to know and love themselves more deeply. As they gained a better understanding of who they were, students also noticed the similarities and celebrated the differences between other classmates. This exploration culminated in a public exhibition of learning, featuring presentations by the students celebrating their uniqueness.