Culturally-Responsive Classrooms: An Interview with Ashley Bible
Last week, I had the chance to catch up with Ashley Bible of Building Book Love for a discussion around culturally-responsive classrooms. Ashley is a teacher, blogger, and resource writer for English literature and language in US secondary (11-18) education, but her ideas can be adapted for different grades, subjects, and contexts.
Why is being culturally-responsive is important?
In the words of Maya Angelou, for me, being culturally responsive is a “know better, do better” situation. When I first started teaching over ten years ago, I was very much test-result focused. I viewed all my lessons through a lens of how to make them more engaging so that students would master more standards. Sadly, I did not have the training nor the perspective to consider how culturally responsive those lessons were.
Thankfully, through the help of social media, books, and trainings, I’ve since learned just how important it is to understand cultural nuances and check my own biases in the classroom. It’s an area that I still have so much to strive for and work on in my career, but I’m grateful for the voices of experts who have helped me start this journey. Learning for Justice and The Conscious Kid are great places to start, and you can find more people I follow on my Instagram @BuildingBookLove
What advice do you have for creating a more culturally-responsive classroom?
Check your teaching role models and mentors. Whether you get your teaching inspiration through educational books, social media, or professional development, do an audit of which voices you allow to influence your classroom. Personally, I was shocked when I really took the time to look at my list. I did not purposefully set out follow and study all white educators, but my audit was alarmingly undiversified.
Once I set out to discover and learn from incredible, diverse educators, my teaching practices began to evolve. I listen, I reflect, and I learn from experts so that I can create a more culturally-responsive classroom.
How can we adjust lessons?
It’s funny because certain lessons that I never thought a thing about now make me cringe– so much so that I try to block them from my memory. Haha But, here’s an example to illustrate my journey:
I taught British Literature for years before finally realizing that teaching all white, mostly male authors for an entire semester was not the best practice. This realization first came after I assigned a research list and a student asked me if any of the influential Brits on the list were Black because that’s who she was interested in researching. Shamefully the answer was no and even more shamefully, when she asked me who she could add to the list, I drew a blank. It took some brainstorming and soul-searching but eventually I came up with some solutions for making my British Literature class more culturally responsive: How to Diversify Your British Literature Class
Later, we transitioned to World Literature rather than British Literature which has the foundation to be much more equitable in a multicultural setting.
Likewise, I have since tried to target areas of ELA curriculum that are the most historically white-dominated. Here are some examples:
A Black History Month for the Books: Celebrating Black Excellence in ELA
Diverse Christmas Short Story Pairings
There is no Early American Literature without Native American Literature
Some pitfalls to avoid?
I think the biggest pitfall to avoid is thinking the task of creating a culturally-responsive classroom is so daunting that you might as well not try. Once you take a hard look at your curriculum, it may seem overwhelming because SO MUCH needs to change. This is probably true, but small actions lead to big changes. Focus on changing one unit or even one paring at a time. Start following just one expert in the field and read one chapter or article a week. Get into the habit of reflecting on your lessons from a cultural perspective for just one minute while writing your plans. Taking small steps over time is better than not starting at all.
Anything else?
I truly don’t feel worthy of writing this post. However, I know that there are many educators just like me who are at this place in their culturally relevant teaching journey, and I hope this helps in some way!
Thanks Ashley!
