Alexis Khoshaba

TRIPLE ENTRY JOURNAL

As You Read As You Read or After You After You Read
Read
Key Passages:  Educators must first ELL student: Would probably feel
reflect on their own appreciated and agree that being
 “Inclusion is not bringing worldview, biases, culturally relevant and accessing
people into what already inherent thinking before their background
exists; it is making a new providing a culturally knowledge/experiences would help
space, a better space for responsive and inclusive them learn. They would feel valued
everyone.” environment and safe by an educator who is
culturally responsive/conscious.
 Culturally responsive  Being culturally
educators understand responsive goes beyond A non ELL student: At first may not
their position in our just being aware of one’s understand the need to include
present social, historical culture activities/books/lessons about
and political context; other cultures but will become more
through questioning  Being caring and aware and curious.
their own attitudes, empathetic means caring
behaviours and beliefs, enough about our A parent: A parent of an ELL
they come to terms with students to hold them to student would be relieved to see
forms of discrimination high standards and their culture acknowledged and
which can affect the expect the same out of talked about. They would be
experiences of students them as everyone else. appreciative that a teacher/school
and families in multiple is culturally responsive. A parent of
ways.  We need to go beyond a non ELL student might be a bit
the curriculum and be hesitant at first but would hopefully
 Culturally responsive sure to include student’s realize that their children would be
pedagogy, connects new prior knowledge, and learning to be culturally conscious,
information to students’ experiences into our and accepting.
background knowledge, teaching, making it
and presents the culturally relevant. A teacher: Would reflect on their
information in ways that own teaching, their biases and
respond to students’  Ensure that our worldviews. They would takeaway
natural ways of learning. environment is culturally practices to implement in their
Culturally responsive conscious, and makes teaching.
pedagogy is one means to students/families feel
the ultimate objective of valued and seen.
multicultural education
for all.  Not only do we have to
hold ourselves
 One consequence of accountable to be
being part of an culturally responsive but
inherently racist society also our administration
is the internalization of and policy makers
 untruths about different
cultural groups, which
can surface in the ways
that these students are
discussed.
 The work of becoming
“culturally responsive” is
quite personal, and may
best begin with
individuals engaging in
reflection as a process
Key Principles:
 (1) holding high
expectations for all
students, (2) assisting
students in the
development of cultural
competence and (3)
guiding students to
develop a critical cultural
consciousness
 These four practices are:
(1) that teachers are
empathetic and caring,
(2) that they are
reflective about their
beliefs about people from
other cultures, (3) that
they are reflective about
their own cultural frames
of reference, and (4) that
they are knowledgeable
about other cultures
 (1) that practitioners’
thinking is grounded in
evidence, (2)
practitioners’ thinking is
flexible, not dualistic, (3)
practitioners’ thinking
shows the ability to
perceive classroom
 One way to ensure future
educators cultivate
empathy and care needed
to be culturally
responsive is to do study
abroad experiences in
their training. -
Connection: Doing a
practicum in India
opened my eyes to a lot,
in regards to cultural
differences and has
shaped the way I teach
now. I believe this would
be an extremely
impactful thing for
future educators to
experience.
 Connection: This year
there have been many
events that have led to
civil rights movements. A
lot of people, including
myself had to take a step
back to learn and listen. I
feel that I have learned
so much and shifted my
mindset to always
question the societal
racism that has been
instilled in my head
throughout my life. I
think as an educator is
even more important to
consider how I am
contributing to being and
teaching anti-racism in
my classroom.
 practices from both his
or her own and the
learners’ points of view,
and (4) practitioners
identify for themselves
areas of opportunity for
further learning.

Key Vocabulary:

 Socio-cultural
consciousness
 Culturally
relevant/responsive
teaching
 Constructivist approach

References

Ontario Ministry of Education (2013). Culturally Responsive Pedagogy, Capacity Building

Series, Ontario Ministry of Education.

Rychly, Laura, and Emily Graves. (2012). “Teacher Characteristics for Culturally Responsive
Pedagogy.” The Official Journal for the National Association for Multicultural Education.