The culturally competent teacher communicates in ways that demonstrate sensitivity to sociocultural and linguistic differences, using a variety of verbal and non-verbal communication techniques that encourage positive social interaction and support learning in their classrooom.
* As you might have read in my first official post, the classroom I tutored in was pretty loud. There was certainly a lot of energy in that room! When the teacher needed quiet time, she would either turn the lights on and off once, or put one finger to her mouth in a "shh!" sign and hold the other fist in the air, which was the class' signal to sit and listen. Whoever followed her lead and did the same signal in their seats would get a color change on the board, which is always an appreciated reward. Once all the students were in their seats and quiet, my teacher had several activities that would encourage quiet interaction and learning.
* If quiet time happened closer to the end of the day, my teacher would have the students wind down by reading a book with a buddy or their table group. This gave students the chance of interacting with others and helping eachother with their reading skills. The bookshelves in the class were absolutely full of every kind of book, and when I looked through them one day while my reading buddy was making a selection, I noticed that the characters on the covers of the books represented every culture and race. And even better, I observed that the students in the class did not just read books about their own races or cultures. They appreciated the book for the sotry, not the kind of person it was about... which is how it should be! I thought this was a great example of my teacher demonstrating sensitivity to sociocultural differences while promoting learning of other cultures, as well.
* Another activity students could do during quiet time is sit down on the reading rug as a class and be quizzed with Fun Facts. My teacher had a stack of cards with questions about the capitals of States, animals, math equations, etc. and she would read one out to the class. Whoever guessed it right would get Kennedy Kash, with was fake paper money for the school store. Sometimes the students would have no clue what the answer to a question was, but were amazed when the teacher read out the answer and they had learned something new. The questions were really varied and focused on any part of the world, so the students were always presented with a new piece of information and their learning experience opened up even more. They were learning things together as a class, which also promoted positive social interaction.
* Throughout my whole tutoring experience, I kind of wanted to ask if my teacher had ever read Dennis Carlson before, because it seemed pretty obvious that she had his theories down pat. Carlson, the author of the article "Gayness, Multicultural Education, and Community", focused his writing on a "democratic, multicultural community curriculum". This curriculum centered around challenging essentialistic worldviews of fixed meaning and recognizing that students are made up of so many different factors, and helping young people build alliances across these different factors with other students. It is clear that reading time did exactly this, by providing the class with books about all different cultures. This way, students could realize similarities between themselves and children of other races, realizing that race itself doesn't define a person. With Fun Fact time, students learn information about places all over the world, information that anyone can learn, no matter what their race, gender, age, etc. I felt that both situations of quiet time were really opportunities to teach Carlson's multicultural curriculum.
* Overall, this tutoring experience has been amazing! I learned so much from my reading buddies, and it was incredible to watch their progress in their reading skills. This was a great experience for me, and it began to show me what kind of teacher I want to be... definitely a culturally competent one, that's for sure! I want to thank my assigned class for being wonderful to me and all the bloggers out there for sharing and commenting on their experiences, too! Good luck to everyone on the rest of their journey to teaching!
P.S. Really sorry this looks like one giant paragraph, but it won't let me indent or space them.. the paragraphs are there, though!
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