Culturally Responsive Teaching (In Korea!)

If you are an American educator, you've probably heard mention of "Culturally Responsive Teaching." When training with Teach For America, the concept a culturally responsive classroom, one in which the teacher seeks to understand her students' cultural context and tailor your teaching to fit the diverse strengths of your student body, was an essential tenet of effective teaching.

I fully agree with these precepts, but when came to my day to day teaching in Bushwick, Brooklyn, my practice sometimes fell short. Though we often celebrated my students' cultures, it was a constant challenge to both see how my students' unique backgrounds sculpted them as learners and identify how their particular strengths played out in the classroom. 

Coming to Korea, I again had those buzzwords of Culturally Responsive Teaching at the forefront of my brain. If responsive teaching was difficult in the US, I wondered, how much more challenging might it be in Korea, where the culture and context are foreign to me in all senses of the word?

What I've found is that the complete foreignness of the school, the students, and even the language they speak, has actually given me a really good insight into how culture affects learning and what cultural responsiveness can feel like in the classroom. Here's what I've found out:

1. Cultural Responsiveness has nothing to do with your students and everything to do with you.

When you've got a clear sense of where YOU are coming from, you can more accurately see your students' cultures and adjust accordingly. The first thoughts that crossed my mind when  I started teaching in Korea were comparative. The classrooms here are louder than mine were, the students here call out and students in my class raised their hands, kids have breaks between periods here and did not have them in my school. When you find yourself comparing your values and your students ' while teaching,  take the time to recognize your cultural bias. What value judgments are you putting on raising your hand or walking in straight lines.

2. Cultural responsiveness means reflecting before reacting.

Stopping to understand your own cultural influences is the first step in being a reflective teacher. Initially, when I saw that students in Korea had slightly different attitudes- more playful, light-hearted, boisterous in class- I thought I had troublemakers on my hands. I rushed to devise stronger management systems, put on my stern teacher face, and squash out all of those "problem behaviors." What I got in return was a group of silent, disinterested, and slightly annoyed students. When I took the time to reflect, I saw that I didn't have a class of trouble makers, but a group of kids with personality, used to a more playful learning environment.

3.Cultural responsiveness is messy. It involves adapting, adjusting, re-planning and redoing.

After reflection comes adaptation. Be OK with the messiness of culturally responsive teaching. If something's broken, no problem, just fix it. In my classroom, I shifted the tone from that of a disciplinarian (a role I was taught to play frequently back in the States) to one as a moderator. I gave my students  more turn and talks, allowed them to practice with partners before having to speak to the whole class, gave them mingling exercises so they could chat with friends (in English!). And slowly, I am seeing the class come to life in a way that suits both me and my students.

4. Cultural responsive teaching begins outside of the classroom.

Students are so much more than students- take the time to understand their lives beyond school walls. This statement is so intuitive, but perhaps easier said than done. To truly understand your students' cultures, you need to witness it outside the classroom. Attend a sporting event, a festival, ask your students about the movies they watch and games they play. It may seem like "extra work" but I think it is not only beneficial to your classroom but requisite for creating a strong, responsive community.  Now excuse me, while I ask my host brother if I can join in on the cartoon marathon- it's all in the name of good teaching!