How to teach students who don’t look like you

Culturally relevant teaching strategies

It was 1996 and the opening day of school. I was explaining the guidelines for a semester course on world literature to the juniors and seniors sitting in front of me. “We will read hard stuff,” I said, “such as Toni Morrison, Mahfouz, Marquez and others.” The students looked impressed as I explained the rigor of the course and my expectations for their work.

Suddenly, two boys rushed through the door, several minutes late, and interrupted the class. I frowned at them, noticing one was African-American and one was Asian.

They both smiled apologetically as they searched for seats. My brain searched for reasons why they arrived late to my advanced class on the first day.

In a split second, I thought that perhaps the Asian student had lingered in his calculus class to ask the teacher a question, making him late for my class. Perhaps the African-American student had been playing basketball. Plausible explanations? What do you think?

Think again.

When my conscious mind caught up with my brain, I was slammed with what I had just done. I was floored. In a classroom where I planned to teach world literature, a literature to broaden students’ minds and destroy stereotypes about world cultures, I, their teacher, found myself wallowing in “stereotype city.” Without even realizing it and certainly without condoning it, I had stereotyped these two young men.

But wait. It gets worse.

Immediately following, this thought flitted through my brain: I bet the Asian male will be an A student: I hope the African-American male will do okay in this class.

Subconscious stereotyping? You bet. My brain, without my conscious permission, stereotyped these two young men and set up a scenario for possible discrimination in my classroom. If these insidious thoughts could bubble up in my conscious mind, what will my unconscious mind produce as I interact with these two students, engage them in dialogue, react to their essays, and grade their tests?

What am I capable of doing that I may not know I know I’m doing? Confused? Think about your “knowing” in four categories: things you know you know; things you know you don’t know; things you don’t know you know; and things you don’t know you don’t know. For example, you may know you are a teacher; you may know you don’t know how to teach physics; you may not know how much you do know about classroom instruction until explaining it to someone in another profession; and you may not know what you don’t know about what is taking place in other parts of the world. Using this framework, what is there that “I don’t know I don’t know” about my attitudes and behaviors toward those who don’t look like me? And how does that play out in my classroom instruction?

This incident, among others, led me to write the book, How to Teach Students Who Don’t Look Like You: Culturally Relevant Teaching Strategies. In the book, you can read my journey as a white woman and lifetime MNEA member who taught in Missouri schools since 1967, a time when the entire student body at the suburban St. Louis school where I taught was white. Things changed in 1984 when students of color were bussed to the district, and I faced new challenges and began a journey to learn what I didn’t know I didn’t know about students who didn’t look like me and how to be a better teacher for all students.

However, that was more than 20 years ago. Surely, those challenges have been overcome by now. Right? Wrong! Today, we face classrooms filled with children from around the globe, and we must hold the same high expectations for every student who walks through the door and believe that each child can learn at high levels and achieve excellence. But do we?

Recently I presented to 100 administrators in a district on the East Coast. I asked how many of their teachers believed that all children can learn at high levels; in other words, what is the belief system for the instruction in their schools? Most principals believed that about 50 percent of their teachers truly believe that all children can learn at high levels, no matter what their skin color or economic background. If 50 percent of the teachers do not believe that their students can learn at high levels, how can we expect to close achievement gaps? In The Learning Leader: How to Focus School Improvement for Better Results, Douglas B. Reeves tells us that we will find that student achievement mirrors our beliefs. Research suggests that low expectations of a teacher result in students failing to those low expectations. Would my lower expectations for the African-American male affect his student achievement in my class?

How do we uncover the belief systems of our colleagues, those teachers who teach next door to us and down the hall? One way is to hold conversations on this topic. Two videos, recently produced by The School Improvement Network, offer vehicles to create dialogue about these issues. In the first one, Kati Haycock, of The Education Trust, James Comer from Yale University, Beverly Tatum, president of Spellman College, Sonia Nieto of the University of Massachusetts, and others share their expertise in No Excuses! How to Raise Minority Achievement, which showcases 10 schools throughout the United States that have closed or are rapidly closing the achievement gap. The second video series, Closing the Achievement Gap, featuring Glenn Singleton, directly examines issues of racism and its insidious effect upon student achievement. The teachers demonstrate how they hold difficult and courageous conversations about issues such as the belief systems of teachers and the impact of race upon achievement. In these videos, you can view the data, the school structures that supported their attaining their successes, and the means by which they achieved it.

Another powerful tool is the book and video, Courageous Conversations about Race: A Field Guide for Achieving Equity in Schools, by Curtis Linton and Glenn Singleton. Together, these two authors provide a framework for courageous conversations for educators that lead us into a cognitive dissonance of what we don’t know we don’t know. However, by participating in courageous conversations, we can learn what we don’t know about race and learn what we need to know to ensure that we do not make the kinds of mistakes I described earlier.

I hope your school is engaged in a full school movement to close the achievement gap. However, what can you do as an individual to learn more about your instructional practices? The book, How to Teach Students Who Don’t Look Like You: Culturally Relevant Teaching Strategies, is one tool to use. The self-reflective workbook allows you to examine your cultural reference, or the “lens” you wear to view the world. As you examine your lens and your instruction, you read about dozens of research-based strategies to bridge cultural differences to create a classroom community for optimal learning.

A stereotype occurs when one aspect of a group is extended to the entire group. It’s even difficult to find an example to use in this article for fear of offending someone. However, consider the stereotypes that some people in other countries may hold of Americans: stereotypes they may have formed as a result of American news, movies, politics and the media. These include the stereotype of Americans as loud, materialistic, and used to immediate gratification. This is not a favorable stereotype, and if traveling to other countries, we may feel “stereotyped” and fear that others will hesitate to get to know the real us.

This same phenomenon can occur in our schools as Asians tend to be stereotyped as the “model” students, or the “model minority.” What then happens to the Asian student in your classroom? That may play out as a positive stereotype, in that you expect more from that student, and he or she responds in kind; however, it may incur added stress for that Asian student who struggles in class.

In contrast, the Black adolescent male, who in our media is often portrayed as a “thug” rather than an exemplary student, may suffer from a negative “stereotype threat.” Claude Steele’s research reinforces this notion. In the article, Thin Ice: Stereotype Threat and Black College Students, Steele defines the “stereotype threat” as “the threat of being viewed through the lens of a negative stereotype, or the fear of doing something that would inadvertently confirm that stereotype.”

Some educators still say they “don’t see color” in an attempt to be “fair” to all. Gary Howard, founder of the REACH Center says that we do Students of Color a disservice if we don’t see color. Author of We Can’t Teach What We Don’t Know: White Teachers, Multiracial Schools, Howard states that the ultimate function of privilege is the right to say race doesn’t matter when it matters daily in the lives of those who live in non-dominant groups. Howard says we must understand the function of social dominance in order to understand how racism plays out in our society, adding that it doesn’t mean we’re bad people if we’re in the dominant group—we just need to know how dominance functions. If I am a White teacher, I can count on the fact that every Black child who walks through my classroom door notices that I am White; to deny that I see the color of my students is to deny their experiences. Instead, I need the ability to form effective and authentic relationships with all students, no matter their skin color or cultural group.

by Dr. Bonnie Davis

About the author
Bonnie M. Davis, Ph.D., a lifetime MNEA member and a teacher for 30 years in the St. Louis area, is the author of How to Teach Students Who Don’t Look Like You: Culturally Relevant Teaching Strategies. ?The book is a “National Staff Development Council Corwin Press Favorite” and a Corwin Press Bestseller for 2006.

Contact Bonnie at a4achievement@earthlink.net, or visit her Web site at www.a4achievement.net.