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Arkansas Lighthouse Academies: Culturally Responsive Teaching

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Lesson 11, Topic 1
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Conclusion

Conclusion

That’s a wrap. Congrats!

 

As someone who is 45 years old and I look back and can see the faces of my grandmother, my grandparents, and I think about the ancestors, and I think about the icons, and I’ll even think about Julie Landsman, who is one of the greatest educators of our time who’s now in her 80’s. That for me, the time is now for us to build on their legacy, and one of the ways we can contribute to this legacy through recruitment and professional development is bringing folks into the teaching profession. Once they’re in the profession, providing them with quality professional development so they stay in the profession. And not only are they staying in the profession and getting the technical skills that they feel that they need in the classroom but they are also growing as whole people.

When you come into the classroom on day one, and you retire or leave…whenever that is, you should leave not only as a different educator but just as a different human being. Because education is tied to our common humanity. So if you leave, and you’re the same person with the same belief system and the same way of being when you started, something has failed. We’ve either recruited the wrong people, or we recruited you and didn’t support you by giving you the best professional development. And this professional development isn’t exclusive to going to a conference, it’s not exclusive to reading a book, but it’s about the opportunities to engage with people who are different from you. And different doesn’t necessarily mean strictly by race, but people who have a different world view, people who have different lived experiences.

And it’s really important to understand, in order for us to provide young people with all of the opportunities that they deserve in our schools, that we have to support our educators. One of the places that we can support educators is in years one through three because we know if a teacher makes it past year three and they stay in the profession either in the classroom or some other aspect of the system, they’re more likely to stay in years five through seven. But what happens is oftentimes a teacher shows up in year one, they get their professional development around, I don’t know, whatever the latest literacy curriculum is, that exists, but we don’t also say to them,

“We’re here to support you in your own growth to understand how to build relationships.”

In order to provide PD, and in order to support teachers in years one through three, it’s more than about “Let’s build this cool handshake with kids.” It’s about saying,

“How do you walk in a way as an educator that allows young people to see you as a part of their hopes and their dreams.”

Because if a young person doesn’t see you as a teacher, as a part of their hopes and their dreams, then we’ve failed. And you’re teaching, regardless of where you went to school, regardless of what you’re certified in, it’s not gonna matter.

What’s important is that young people see you as an educator, as a part of their journey to reach their hopes and their dreams.

Resource Referenced from Video

"Veteran teacher Julie Landsman leads the reader through a day of teaching and reflection about her work with high school students who are from a variety of cultures. She speaks honestly about issues of race, poverty, institutional responsibility, and white privilege by engaging the reader in the experiences of a day in the classroom with some of her remarkable students."

Cynthia Boyd