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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Bildung
- Sprache: Englisch
Capitalize on the latest educational research and youth voices to inform your teaching and become more culturally and developmentally aware In Who's In My Classroom?, accomplished educator and author delivers an inspirational and practical combination of true stories from teens in Youth Communication's award-winning writing program and the most current educational research. The book links theories of adolescent development and identity formation to best practices in real-world classrooms where teachers strive to form supportive relationships with students. In this book, you'll find: * Narrative and explanations of the most cutting-edge research in educational and developmental psychology and cultural competence * Excerpts from stories by students specifically written and edited with social and emotional learning competencies in mind * Practical and concrete strategies for administrators and teachers to implement for sustainable improvement in learning outcomes for their students, including the use of Youth Communication's stories Perfect for K-12 educators, counselors, and administrators, Who's In My Classroom? is also an indispensable resource for higher education professionals and pre-service teachers seeking a practical guide to help them become more developmentally and culturally responsive in their work.
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Seitenzahl: 526
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Introduction
Other Things to Know about This Book
References
CHAPTER ONE: An Introduction to Developmentally and Culturally Responsive Teaching (DCRT)
My First Lesson in Listening to Students
Why It's Crucial to Know Your Students
Why Understanding Child and Adolescent Development Is Crucial for Teachers
The Adolescent Brain Is Still Developing
Development Is Shaped by Multiple Settings
Why Cultural Responsiveness Is Crucial for Teachers
Connections between Home and School Help Students Meet High Expectations
The Importance and Meaning of High Expectations
Growing Recognition of Culturally Responsive Education
Becoming a Developmentally and Culturally Responsive Teacher
What Teachers Can Do
What Schools Can Do
Notes
References
CHAPTER TWO: Recognizing and Undoing Bias—How Teachers’ Beliefs Impact Students
Helping Everyone Grow
Understanding Our Beliefs about Intelligence and Ability
Recognizing—and Undoing—Bias in the Classroom
Moving toward Understanding Our Students
What Teachers Can Do
What Schools Can Do
Notes
References
CHAPTER THREE: How Schools Influence Our Beliefs about Ourselves
What Is Identity Development?
How We Can Shape Our Own Identity
The Power of Peers and Identity
What Teachers Can Do
What Schools Can Do
Notes
References
CHAPTER FOUR: How Schools Shape Gender and Racial Identity Development
The Pressure to Conform
Supporting Gender Identity Development
Supporting Racial Identity Development
The Importance of Positive Racial Identity
What Teachers Can Do
What Schools Can Do
Notes
References
CHAPTER FIVE: How Stress and Trauma Affect Learning
Stress Reactions Are Not “Logical”
Understanding the Differences among Stress, Chronic Stress, and Trauma
The Adolescent Brain's Response to Chronic Stress and Trauma
Stress, Trauma, and Disproportionality
Our Cultural Backgrounds Influence How We Cope
Reducing Institutional Stress Caused by School
We Need to Be Attuned to the Impact of External Stressors
A Developmentally and Culturally Responsive Approach to Understanding Student Behavior
What Teachers Can Do
What Schools Can Do
Notes
References
CHAPTER SIX: How We Can Help Students Heal and Do Better in School
We Need More Compassionate Schools (the COVID-19 Pandemic Made That Even Clearer)
Psychologically Healthy Students Are Better Students
Schools as Centers of Healing: The Importance of Trauma-Informed Schools
Why Meaningful Connections Are So Important
Meaningful Connections Foster Engagement in School and Help Students to Heal
“Safe” Schools Are Schools Where Students Feel They Can Take Academic and Personal Risks
Why Respecting Students Is So Important
We Help Students Achieve by Helping Them to Strengthen Their Social and Emotional Skills
What Teachers Can Do
What Schools Can Do
Notes
References
CHAPTER SEVEN: The Change Process
The Change Process: Equity as Our North Star
The Change Process: Teacher Mindsets and the Details of Daily Practice
The Change Process: Professional Development
The Change Process: Curriculum and Assessment
The Change Process: Building a Positive School Climate
The Change Process: Making Youth Voice Integral to Change
Notes
References
CHAPTER EIGHT: Reaching DCRT Goals through True, Teen-Written Stories
How to Use the Stories
Using Advisory to Build a Developmentally and Culturally Responsive School
Using Teen Stories in English Language Arts instruction (and Beyond)
Using the Stories in Professional Development
The Writing Program
What Teachers Can Do
What Schools Can Do
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
Teen Story Index
Index
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Table of Contents
Introduction
Begin Reading
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
Teen Story Index
Index
End User License Agreement
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Who's in My Classroom?
Building Developmentally and Culturally Responsive School Communities
Gess LeBlanc, Ph.D.with Tim Fredrick, Ph.D., andYouth Communication Writers
Keith Hefner and Maria Luisa Tucker, co-editors
Copyright © 2021 Youth Communication / New York Center, Inc. All rights reserved.
Jossey-BassA Wiley Imprint111 River St, Hoboken, NJ 07030www.josseybass.com
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available. LCCN: 2021027851
ISBN 9781119824138 (paperback), 9781119824145 (ebook), 9781119824152 (ebook)
Cover image: Notepad Paper © Hudiemm/Getty ImagesCover design: Paul McCarthy
FIRST EDITION
Introduction
Ms. Lombardo took the time to get to know me. She would talk to me about the books I was reading to connect with me. I gradually began to feel safe around her. I still don't know how she was able to see the loneliness that so many before her had failed to notice, but I do know that she was determined to make it right. She was committed to being that one person in my life who I could rely on and confide in.
—Anonymous Youth Communication teen writer, from the story “My Teacher Saved Me from Solitude”
THERE'S AN adage that says that you can't teach what you don't know. While the origins of the quote appear to be unknown, the idea is that effective teachers must know their subject matter.
But knowing your subject matter is just one element of good teaching. I wrote this book because I believe you also can't teach WHO you don't know.
Over the past few decades, researchers in education and psychology have found convincing evidence that learning is also strongly influenced by students' sense of who they are and their beliefs in their ability to learn. It is also influenced by their experiences at home and their level of cognitive and emotional development. This research has important implications for how we prepare teachers to enter the field and how we support them during their careers. It helps us rethink our notions of what it means to be an effective teacher. Yes, we need to know our subject matter. But getting to know students is also crucial to our effectiveness as educators.
I'm a developmental psychologist. Over the past 20 years, I've worked as a faculty member in the School of Education at Hunter College of the City University of New York where I support the preparation of teachers, school leaders, and counselors. During that time, I've become increasingly interested in how children's experiences inside and outside the classroom influence their learning and engagement in school. As a Black man and father of two Black sons, I've focused especially on how those experiences influence the school engagement of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) youth and other young people who may feel “unseen” in school, including LGBTQ+ students and youth who live in poverty.
As an expert in the field of child and adolescent development, I've worked as an educational consultant at the state level, and with urban, suburban, and rural school districts. My focus has been helping teachers design lessons that address students' cognitive, physical, social, and emotional needs in ways that also demonstrate an understanding of their students' lives and cultures.
One of the most rewarding features of my work with teachers and schools is talking with students about how they're experiencing school. We talk about what helps them learn and obstacles that make learning more difficult. We also discuss what makes a good teacher. I've had the opportunity to ask these questions of more than 1,000 children ranging from age 8 to 18. I've never had a child tell me that their teacher was a good teacher because they knew a lot about a subject area like math or English. What they tell me is that good teachers get to know them. They make them feel like they're cared for. They make lessons interesting and engaging by connecting them to students' lives.
It's a good sign that students expect teachers to know their subject matter. But for students, that's not enough. Good teachers do two things at once: We work to understand our students while simultaneously helping them to understand the content that we are charged with teaching.
But with the increasing ethnic, racial, and linguistic diversity in schools throughout the United States, the challenge of “knowing” our students is ever growing: It's virtually certain that we will have students in our classroom whose life experiences are very different from our own. These differences can present challenges to getting to know them. But they also present opportunities to learn about others, and ourselves, in ways that make us more effective teachers and make teaching more interesting. But what does it mean to “know” students and why is knowing students so important?
Once upon a time, many teachers and students shared similar racial, religious, and socio-economic backgrounds, which made it easier for teachers to “know” their students. That's important because academic research suggests that teachers are more effective when they have knowledge of their students' cultural backgrounds and how they develop cognitively, physically, socially, and emotionally. As the evidence base has grown, the field of teacher education and professional development has increasingly emphasized the importance of developmentally appropriate and culturally responsive teaching.
For example, through its Developmentally Appropriate Practice (DAP) framework, the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) emphasizes that knowing how children develop and learn, knowing the individual needs of children, and knowing their cultural backgrounds are critical to supporting learning. Similarly, the field of Culturally Responsive Teaching has emphasized the importance of understanding students' cultural backgrounds and understanding how culture shapes their experiences in school. This research has raised awareness of the importance of designing lessons that reflect an understanding of who children are—both developmentally and culturally.
This book is grounded in the understanding that development is shaped by culture. Conversely, to teach in ways that are responsive to children's cultural backgrounds, we need to understand how they develop. Thus, we introduce the concept of Developmentally and Culturally Responsive Teaching (DCRT). That's a mouthful, but the concept is simple: DCRT applies the principles of culturally responsive teaching in ways that are responsive to the developmental needs of students. It is grounded in four tenets:
Our beliefs and expectations about children from backgrounds different from our own influence how we teach.
Enhancing our knowledge of child and adolescent development makes us more effective teachers.
Understanding the relationship between culture and development makes our teaching more effective.
Lack of awareness of how schools shape children's perceptions of themselves and their abilities makes our teaching less effective.
Developmentally and Culturally Responsive Teaching is important because when teachers have knowledge of their students they're more effective educators. That knowledge can come from many sources, including colleagues, parents, and school records, and even social science research. But the most important source is students themselves.
That's why students' voices are centered in this book. In each chapter, I summarize key social science research about youth development and culture, and I pair the research findings with true stories by young people that bring the research to life. The young people reflect on personal, developmental, and cultural experiences that influenced their learning and behavior in school. Their stories have an immediate emotional and intellectual effect. They may remind you of students you have taught. And you will learn about the feelings and experiences behind student behavior that we seldom have access to.
The diversity of experiences in the students' stories and their reflections on those experiences are vivid examples of why it's important not to assume that we understand what our students are going through. Together, the academic findings and the student testimonials make a powerful case for the value of developmentally and culturally responsive teaching.
This book will help teachers, counselors, and youth workers who want to better understand their students so they can enhance their practice. It will help administrators and policymakers create school settings that are more likely to advance student achievement. However, this is not a workbook or manual. It does not provide you with a script of everything that you need to know about teaching children from diverse cultural and racial backgrounds. Instead, it is a guide for how to develop a curious, nonjudgmental mindset that will help you: (1) break through superficial assumptions to really get to know your students; (2) see students' strengths more clearly and help them to reveal their strengths; and (3) go beyond the idea that demographic characteristics define your students' possibilities.
The book is divided into eight chapters that are designed to raise awareness, foster knowledge, and enhance teaching skills. Each chapter includes excerpts from stories by several students, plus a discussion of connections between students' experiences and educational and psychological research. And each chapter ends with ideas and resources that teachers and administrators can use to take action, called, respectively, “What Teachers Can Do,” and “What Schools Can Do.”
In Chapter 1, we provide an overview of Developmentally and Culturally Responsive Teaching (DCRT), explain why it's so important, and discuss resources that teachers and schools can use to enhance their knowledge of child and adolescent development.
Chapter 2 focuses on how our beliefs and assumptions about our students shape our interactions with them. It also explores ways to change negative beliefs and undo bias.
Chapter 3 examines how identity development occurs within the context of school and discusses culturally responsive ways in which teachers and schools can help support positive identity development.
In Chapter 4, we focus on race and gender, and look at how teachers and schools can foster positive racial and gender identity development.
Chapter 5 looks at how students' experiences outside of school influence their experiences within school. Specifically, we focus on the impact of stress and trauma, and discuss ways in which family dynamics, housing and income insecurity, foster care, and other stressors shape how young people learn and behave in school.
In Chapter 6, we shift our focus to helping students heal from stress and trauma, and how teachers and schools can implement trauma-sensitive practices in ways that benefit all students.
In Chapter 7, we discuss the role that DCRT can play in improving school climate and culture, and how DCRT can serve as a tool for advancing broader goals related to educational equity.
Finally, in Chapter 8, we show how the stories by teens at Youth Communication can be put at the center of teaching and professional development.
Other Things to Know about This Book
Student Stories: All student examples in the book are from stories written by teens in the Youth Communication writing program. We describe a bit more about that work in Chapters 1 and 8. We give the age of the student at the time he or she wrote the story. All of these stories originally appeared in Youth Communication's print and digital magazines. As you will see, some of the students choose to be anonymous and others chose to have their names on their stories.
Language: Who are I, We, and You? When you see I in the text, it mostly refers to me (Gess LeBlanc) and my experiences. At times, it also references the experience of Tim Fredrick and other Youth Communication staff. Tim and I are both teachers who have experienced many of the challenges that all teachers face, so we often switch to we when writing about common issues that we all face in teaching.
You, of course, are the reader. The primary audience for this book is educators, including teachers and out-of-school staff, students who are studying to be teachers, and school and district administrators. Regardless of your race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or other demographic or cultural descriptor that is important to you, if you are a teacher in today's increasingly diverse America, you are going to have students whose backgrounds are very different from your own. Thus, this book is for all educators.
Pronouns: In recent years, in our work with students and colleagues, we have learned not to presume someone's preferred pronoun or that a person fits into the male/female gender binary. Though it is stylistically inconsistent, in this book, we go back and forth between he, she, and they.
Resources: We refer to many resources that you can use to implement ideas in the book in your own classrooms, your school, and your district. If you are reading an electronic version of this book, you can just follow the link. Otherwise, we've given enough information to search for the resource. You will note that our references to the resources are suggestive; we don't describe the resources in detail. We encourage you to access the ones that fit the needs of your school and community.
However, we do offer professional development, which can include exploring and practicing many of the ideas in the “What Teachers Can Do” and “What Schools and Districts Can Do” sections of this book. (See the following chart for contact information for Gess LeBlanc and Youth Communication.)
Academic Research: We also refer to many academic studies and briefly summarize the key points that are relevant to DCRT. You are, of course, welcome to follow the footnotes to learn more about the findings and the nuances of the studies.
We hope this book will spur you to think about your teaching and to make changes in your classes, your school, and your district. We know that identifying practices that improve classroom teaching and district policies so students are more likely to achieve the best possible outcomes is a never-ending process. Our teaching and professional development work is part of that process, and we are always eager to improve it. We invite suggestions about the ideas in this book and welcome opportunities to work with school districts.
Gess LeBlanc
Tim Fredrick
Hunter College
Youth Communication
School of Education
References
Bredekamp, S. and Copple, C. (1997).
Developmentally Appropriate Practice in Early Childhood Programs
(Revised Edition)
. National Association for the Education of Young Children, 1509 16th Street, NW, Washington, DC 20036-1426.
Gay, G. (2000).
Culturally Responsive Teaching
. New York: Teachers College Press.
Ladson-Billings, G. (1994).
The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Students
. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Nieto, S. (ed.). (2005).
Why We Teach
. New York: Teachers College Press.
Rogoff, B. (1990).
Apprenticeship in Thinking: Cognitive Development in Social Context
. New York: Oxford.
Venables, D. R. (2011).
The Practice of Authentic PLCs: A Guide to Effective Teacher Teams
. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
CHAPTER ONEAn Introduction to Developmentally and Culturally Responsive Teaching (DCRT)
I may not be the smartest in the class, but I am generally ambitious and hard-working. For a long time, though, math and science classes were an exception. I was content to get by with lower grades in them. That mindset changed thanks to my sophomore year physics teacher, Mr. Stevens (not his real name).
Taking physics seemed like some type of punishment. I brought a poor attitude with me to class each day, just wanting it to be over.
I ended up failing the first marking period. I convinced myself that it wasn’t a big deal and continued with my sour outlook throughout the second marking period. I guessed that my teacher could see I didn’t care and would be happy to keep failing me. But one day at the end of the second marking period, something unusual happened.
When the bell rang, I hopped out of my desk and started gathering my things. Just then, Mr. Stevens called my name.
I looked up. He said, “I’d like to speak to you once you’re ready.” I nodded. Great! He was going to give me a boring lecture on how I should take advantage of the free education I had been given or start asking why I didn’t care about school. Blah, blah. He didn’t know me; he just knew my performance in this one class, so I wouldn’t let his aggression affect me. What could he do? Threaten to call my parents? So with my head up high I walked over to his desk, ready for anything he was going to throw at me.
Right away, he gave me a welcoming smile and asked how my day was going. Surprised at his friendly manner, I told him I was actually a little stressed about a geometry exam, but other than that, I was all right. I assumed it was small talk before he landed the big speech, but what he had to say next surprised me even more.
“I just wanted to let you know that I know you’re not doing as well as you could be in your class. I’m positive you are capable of way more, Neha. I picked up your transcript from the guidance counselor’s office today and I see you have good grades in your other classes. Physics is a little difficult for you, huh?”
I couldn’t answer. I was trying to digest the fact that he actually went and reviewed my transcript. I wondered if it could be that he was actually curious about me as an individual.
But part of me was just defiant. He said I was struggling in “my” class—Hello? Physics was his class. Not mine. I was just forced to take it.
He continued, “I want to invite you to tutoring. I tutor Tuesdays and Thursdays and plenty of students come in. It does get crowded sometimes, so I can’t always guarantee I’ll be able to help you on the particular topic you’re struggling with. But I’ll try.”
I tried to read his face, wondering what the catch was. The tutoring sessions weren’t news to me, but I never expected him to reach out and invite me. Most teachers only pay attention to the students who look like they care. My geometry teacher always told us, “I’m not even going to bother with kids who do not want to help themselves.” This teacher obviously had a different approach.
—Youth Communication writer Neha Basnet, from “How I Conquered Physics, with Unexpected Help”
My First Lesson in Listening to Students
In the fall of 1992, I was a 24-year-old doctoral student in New York City. Like many of my classmates, I struggled to balance the demands of my courses with the need to support myself. Rather than look for work as an adjunct professor or a researcher, I took a job with a nonprofit organization helping to run an after-school program at a junior high school in East Harlem. Since I was pursuing my degree in developmental psychology, I figured, “What better way to learn about development than by working directly with developing youth?”
I had grown up in the northeast section of the Bronx, so it wasn't as though I was raised in a wealthy suburb of the city. But East Harlem seemed like a completely different world to me. We were in the midst of the crack and heroin epidemic of the early 1990s that hit East Harlem extremely hard. Unfortunately, the neighborhood became synonymous to some people with drugs and crime.
When I told friends about my new job, I could see the concern on their faces. “Are you sure you want to work there?” they asked. “You know that's not a safe neighborhood, right? It's like a war zone over there.”
As I prepared for my first day of work, I tried to mentally prepare for the “war zone” that would soon be my new place of work. Since I was working with an after-school program, I arrived right before the students were dismissed. Before I even entered the school building, I noticed several adults with orange buckets. They were walking around the schoolyard picking up things. I was curious, so I moved a bit closer and asked what they were doing. They said that they were removing needles before the students could be dismissed into the yard.
I was stunned. I tried not to react, but I felt defeated even before I met my students. If that's what these children had to deal with every day, I thought, how could I possibly relate to them? As I walked to what would become my classroom, I felt sad for the students. While they were entering the room, I was thinking about their schoolyard and the challenges they faced each day just to get to school.
With a combination of anxiety mixed with ignorance and arrogance, I introduced myself, sat down with my students and asked them what they thought about their school and their neighborhood. I thought I knew how they would answer and expected their answers to lead perfectly into the motivational speech that I already rehearsed in my head. I was going to tell them the one about if they did well in school, they could go to a good college, get a job, “escape” their neighborhood, and have a better life.
But that’s not how the conversation went. One student answered by saying that her neighborhood was loud. Almost without fully listening to the rest of her sentence, I was already hearing her say that being loud was bad and that she didn't like where she lived. As I began to feel sorry for her and what she had to endure, she continued, “But it's not a bad thing. They play music from my country and it reminds me of home. It helps me to sleep at night. I really love it here.”
“I love it here too,” another student shared. “This is my home. It's my favorite place in the city.”
I have no idea what my face revealed at the time, but inside I was stunned. How could a place that people described as a “war zone” bring such comfort to my students? How could they love a place that I thought they would want to escape from?
I often think about that time because it reminds me of how my beliefs and expectations about students can influence how I teach them, what I think they're capable of, and how much I engage them intellectually. Most importantly, it reminds me of the value of getting to know my students.
At the same time I was beginning my work in East Harlem, the staff of Youth Communication was refining an award-winning journalism program in which public high school students learn to write powerful personal essays about the challenges in their lives. The teen writers commit to a rigorous process in which they write more than a dozen drafts under the tutelage of full-time professional editors before their stories get published. The writers come from a wide range of backgrounds, including youth living in foster care or homeless shelters. And the writers attend a wide range of schools, from the most struggling neighborhood schools to elite public and private schools. All of the student examples in this book are from their stories.
The stories show aspects of their lives unseen by all but their most trusted teachers. But like my East Harlem students, when the teens write about tough circumstances they don't dwell on the negative. Rather, as you will see, they focus on how they manage those challenges and even overcome them. Sometimes, of course, what we mistakenly see as a sad challenge, the writers see as an important part of who they are. Like the occasional conversations when students really open up in our classrooms, the stories are a valuable window into their lives. They show the stressors that we may not be aware of; they show what is valuable and important to them; and they show how teens use resourcefulness, creativity, and resilience to overcome challenges and achieve their goals. In short, they offer the kind of information that would help all teachers be more effective, but that too few of us have access to.
One goal of this book is to help equip teachers and school leaders with skills and strategies that will enable them to hear students’ voices and to integrate their experiences into instruction. Fortunately, on that first day in East Harlem, I heard those voices. I asked my students to tell me about how they experience their neighborhood before I started imposing my stereotypes on them. Had I read some of the stories by teens at Youth Communication before that first day, I would have had a more nuanced and accurate understanding of the complexity of my students’ thoughts and feelings.
For example, Roberta Nin Feliz, 16, describes her rough Bronx neighborhood very differently than I would have imagined it before my experience in East Harlem:
At the entrance of my building, there are a few things you might smell: weed, urine, or food. But once you are inside, smelling the various scents of everyone's cooking is as pleasant as discovering an extra dollar in your pocket. Their cooking always smells bien sazonao (well-seasoned.) When you walk past apartment doors, you can usually hear the women of the building bochinchando (gossiping). The women usually gossip about the neighbor's daughter who got pregnant or the neighbor's son who sells drugs on the second floor. They can point things out better than even the most detailed forensic scientist.
Of course, Roberta is not oblivious to the problems in her neighborhood. But for her they exist in a larger context. In another part of her story, she writes:
If you travel two blocks east from my block, you will come across a parking lot where men come to pee. As soon as it gets a little dark, the alcoholics and crackheads scatter to the gate and relieve themselves. It is bad enough that I have to avoid dog poop, I also have to avoid disgusting men's urine.
But the most distinctive trait about my neighborhood is the smiles. Everywhere you look there is always someone smiling. On the same block where a 19-year-old kid died, you can find children playing hopscotch. The single mothers smile, the crackheads smile, the unemployed men smile, the dealers smile, the addicts smile, everyone smiles. Every corner you turn, you are guaranteed to always come across a smile.
The complexities and contradictions of her neighborhood have also helped Roberta to become a sophisticated observer who has learned to avoid the kinds of stereotypes that are often applied to her:
I'd like to help one of my close friends. We've known each other since 6th grade. He has dyslexia so it's hard for him to do schoolwork. I remember him asking me to help him read. I tried, but he got frustrated and said, “I don't get this sh-t.” Today, he's in a gang.
Still, he's one of the most caring people I know. I can count on him to listen and give me sound advice. When I've gone through bad breakups he's there to remind me of my worth and help me stay positive. I tell him that he should stop fighting and be focused in school. He has six younger siblings that he has to be a role model for. There are periods of time when he stays out of trouble, but eventually it seems to find him.
This friend is just one example of how being raised in the hood has made me more understanding and compassionate. Before I judge, I get to know a person because I know how it feels when people make assumptions about you based on where you live or your appearance. When I'm on the train I often feel that people are caught by surprise when they see me pull out a book by Shakespeare.
But other than showing respect, or just not making fools of ourselves, why is knowing students so important? Research within the fields of education and psychology shows that when we have knowledge of our students’ cultural backgrounds and knowledge of how they develop cognitively, physically, socially, emotionally, and linguistically, it makes us more effective teachers.1 The problem is that we often don't ask students the types of questions that help us to understand how they develop and what they need to feel supported.
Over the last five years, I've had the pleasure of conducting focus groups with children and adolescents from urban, suburban, and rural schools to better understand how they experience school. One of the most consistent findings of this work is that students often feel as though adults in their schools make decisions for them but without sufficient knowledge of them and without hearing from them. Many of the stories by teens in the Youth Communication writing program confirm these findings.
If you put yourself in their shoes, it's easy to understand how frustrating that could be. Imagine walking into your doctor's office. The doctor takes a quick look at you and then, before asking a single question about your symptoms or concerns, tells you what is wrong with you, prescribes medication and a lifestyle change, and says that if you didn't comply, you'll be in trouble. Even if they were right, I suspect that it would be the last time you visited that doctor.
Desmin Braxton, 17, looks back on that feeling of being judged and not listened to in his story “Labeled Troublesome”:
Walking through the front door of my middle school, it feels like someone's turned the temperature up. I start sweating as if I had a fever. It seems like everything just stops and all the attention is focused on me. Today feels like a trouble day.
My music teacher stands at the corner of the hallway, looking at me like I've got something on my face. As I walk through the hall I see kids playing, fighting, ripping posters off the wall, and just chillin’ in the hallway. The noise level is high.
I spot my math teacher. He does not look happy to see me. He stares at me rudely with his arms folded and his jaw clenched, like I've already done something wrong.
“Hello, Mr. Davis, how you today?”
He continues to stare, so I continue walking through the hall to the auditorium. Before I get there, my social studies teacher from last year stops me.
“Desmin.”
“What?”
“Where are you going?”
“To the auditorium, with my class.”
“Go there right now.”
I start getting mad. It's crazy how he stops me even though he knows where I'm headed, but he walks past the other kids and doesn't say anything. It's like I have on a bright red shirt that says, “Stop me.”
I admit I do things that get me in trouble at school. I like to talk in class, argue with the teacher and make people laugh. But I feel like the teachers and principals are always waiting for me to do something stupid so they can jump on my case. It's like we're in a war. The only question is who's going to strike first.
A lot of times it's me who makes the first strike. I do these little tests to see if a teacher is going to be respectful. If the teacher is cool, I'm not going to cross the line. But if he gets me mad, it's going to be a battle.
When I get a negative response from my teachers, I react with a rude comment, to let them know I do not like what they say. It makes me mad that they feel they can speak to me any way they want and try to make me afraid of them.
But the arguments with my teachers are cutting into my time for doing my work. It's making me fall behind in class so my grades are dropping. I end up focusing on the teacher and not learning the lesson. Then I'm stuck looking silly, without a clue on how to do the work.
Desmin wants to succeed. But he needs support that he's not getting. When I started working in schools, I was surprised by how many times I took part in meetings in which plans were made to “meet students’ needs” and to “support their learning” without ever involving students. We were essentially telling them what was wrong with them and prescribing a plan to “help” them without fully understanding their needs, what wasn't working for them, or how they felt we could best support them.
Why It's Crucial to Know Your Students
Having developmentally and culturally responsive teachers is important for all students, but it's particularly important for students from underrepresented groups and those who have been historically marginalized. These are the students that many of us are least likely to know well. However, DCRT is not simply about helping White teachers to teach Black and Brown children better. Through my work in schools, I've witnessed first-hand White teachers teaching White students in ways that were not culturally responsive. I've also observed Black and Latinx educators teach Black and Latinx students in ways that were not culturally responsive.
More importantly, I've witnessed teachers of different races and ethnicities teach children very different from themselves in ways that demonstrated knowledge and deep respect and curiosity about their students’ cultural backgrounds and showed that they believed they would succeed academically. For example, in the quote that begins this chapter, the teacher and student do not share a racial or ethnic background. Neha's teacher bridged whatever gap might have existed by showing genuine interest in Neha and her schoolwork.
So the focus of DCRT is to use our knowledge of who our students are, both developmentally and culturally, to shape classroom environments and schools that better support their needs. But it isn't that simple. What we believe about our students and what we actually know about them can be dramatically different. For example, I believed my East Harlem students wanted to escape from what I perceived as a war zone, but I didn't actually know that. It took a while—and many conversations with them—for me to acquire meaningful knowledge about their lives. I learned about their interest in going to college so that they could make a better life for themselves and their families. I also learned they worried about their families not being able to pay for college. Most importantly, I learned about the things that interested them and how school often felt disconnected from their lives.
As a parent, I remember having “conversations” with my teenage sons at the end of their middle school day that followed a frustrating pattern.
“How was your day?”
“Good.”
“What did you learn today in school?”
“Nothing.”
“You spent seven hours in school and you didn't learn anything?”
“Nothing that I was interested in.”
“Well, do you understand everything? Do you need help?”
“I'm fine.”
I was spending lots of time and mental energy trying to get a sense of what my sons learned in school, but I didn't spend enough time focusing on how being in school made them feel. Once I shifted from asking them about what they learned in school to what they wished they could learn in school or what would make school more interesting and enjoyable for them, our “conversations” shifted from interrogations to dialogues.
As I mentioned in the introduction, in recent years I've conducted focus groups with hundreds of elementary, middle, and high school students from urban, suburban, and rural public schools and urban private schools. I use four simple questions to learn more about their experience of school: (1) What are some of your favorite things about school? (2) If you were in charge, what things would you change about your school? (3) What are some things that your teachers do that help you to learn? And (4) What are some things that make it harder for you to learn in school?
Meanwhile, the teens at Youth Communication have written hundreds of stories about what works and doesn't work for them in school. They echo many of the answers that I have heard in those focus groups. Here are a few excerpts:
Ebony Coleman, 18, notes that caring teachers find creative ways to learn about students’ lives and personalities:
Even kids you think are a lost cause get engaged with the right method. If you know how their life is, you can use something that relates to them. Say the student's a hustler, and you know this because when they're in the lunchroom you hear them all the time. If you have a math lesson, you can apply the lesson to their life. I see that a lot and it works.
Margarita Martinez, 18, describes several methods that show caring:
Mr. Hatchett not only teaches well, he believes in all his students and doesn't give up on us. Let's say one student complains that the work is hard. He will go up to the board and let the student tell him which part of the problem they don't understand. He'll explain it, do another problem, and let the student try it. Later, he'll call on that student so they start getting motivated. And during independent study, he's constantly asking the class if anyone needs help. No one is left behind.
Renea Williams, 18, says don't overdo it:
Teachers shouldn't act like students. You can be their friend, help them with schoolwork, and let them come to you and talk about their lives. But I hate it when you act your students’ age and use the slang students use. It's unprofessional.
Evin Cruz, 19, says don't give up on a student:
Sometimes you just truly don't get it, and then you need a teacher to be patient and explain it over and over, maybe a different way, to make sure you understand. The teacher shouldn't just give up and think, “He doesn't get it, but he'll learn eventually”—he probably won't! With school, it's a snowball effect: If you don't know one thing, it's harder for you to learn other things.
There's a consistent message from the teens in my focus groups and the teen writers at Youth Communication: It is important for students to feel like their teachers care about them, and when teachers get to know about their lives outside of school it can have a big impact on their learning. Students also report that they often struggle to manage the demands of school and life, and when teachers adapt how they teach in a way that's responsive to their reality, it makes students more eager to learn.
Why Understanding Child and Adolescent Development Is Crucial for Teachers
As important as it is to listen to individual students, there are other things teachers need to know about youth, in general. As a developmental psychologist, I believe that one important way to “know” students is to have knowledge of how they develop physically, cognitively, linguistically, socially, and emotionally.
For more than two decades, I've worked as a professor in Hunter College's School of Education where I teach courses in the developmental sciences to undergraduate and graduate students preparing to become teachers. I've learned that understanding how children and adolescents develop makes us better prepared to support their needs. By their needs, I don't exclusively mean their academic needs. Rather, I focus on developmental needs—needs that are typical of all students within a particular age range, such as during adolescence.
For example, all students need to be intellectually engaged, to feel competent, and to feel a sense of accomplishment. But for adolescents, there's also a critical need for self-understanding and the need to reflect on what makes them who they are. They need to better understand how their race and gender shape their sense of identity and the identity of groups in which they claim membership. And they need to better understand their personal beliefs and their values. All students also need the opportunity to express themselves creatively. For adolescents, this creative expression helps them to discover their talents and their voice and agency and it helps them to explore their thoughts and feelings in ways that enable them to exert control over their lives.
All students also need to engage with others in a supportive and nurturing environment. With adolescents, positive relationships with peers are especially critical to helping them to recognize their own emotions, how to recognize the emotions of others, and how to respond to others with empathy and care.
I remember looking back at one of my old elementary school class photos. What stood out to me was the range of heights. I was one of the taller students, so I was in the back row, but I wasn't the oldest student. In fact, I remember clearly that a few classmates on the shorter side were actually the oldest ones in the class. It seems perfectly reasonable for us to accept and even expect a wide range of physical development across students in the same grade, and to know that those physical characteristics are not fixed. But why is it less likely for us to expect the same variability regarding cognitive, social, or emotional development? Why is it that we often associate physical development with social and emotional development? I remember once being frustrated by the “lack of maturity” demonstrated by one of my middle school students, who happened to be the tallest student in my class, until I found out that he was my youngest student.
Scholars and policymakers within the fields of education and psychology have highlighted the need for educators to be knowledgeable about how children and adolescents develop.2 For example, through their Developmentally Appropriate Practice framework, the National Association for the Education of Young Children suggests that knowing how children develop and learn, knowing the individual needs of children, and knowing their cultural backgrounds are critical to supporting their learning.3 A comprehensive report by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development published in 2007 states that “aspects of development—neural, cognitive, social, psychological, physical and ethical—have far-reaching effects on children's ability to learn.”4
Similarly, a 2010 report published by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education notes that “teacher knowledge of the social, emotional, and cognitive domains, coupled with the ability to effectively apply strategies based on developmental principles, translates to increased student engagement and improved learning outcomes.”5
Several studies have also found that teachers with knowledge of child and adolescent development are more likely to design and implement lessons that address not only the academic, but also the social and emotional needs of their students.6 As a result of these findings, two common teacher performance assessments—the Danielson Framework for Teaching (which is used to assess the performance of teachers) and the edTPA (which is used to assess the performance of students preparing to become teachers)—emphasize the need for teachers to demonstrate knowledge of their students’ strengths and learning needs.
While development is variable, it is not necessarily linear. For example, during childhood and adolescence, increases in age are associated with enhanced motor skills and more complex thinking. But during adolescence, we also see behaviors that might easily be interpreted as a reduction in complex thinking. Through his research, psychologist Dr. David Elkin found that while adolescents generally advance in cognitive complexity as they age, in certain instances, they may think in ways that are more typical of younger children than burgeoning adults.7 Think back to your own adolescence. Do you remember ever thinking that your life was terrible and that no one in the world could possibly understand what you were going through? Do you remember feeling like you couldn't leave your house because you had a pimple on your nose or because your hair wasn't just right and you thought everyone in the world would notice it? Dr. Elkin found that this type of thinking is typical for adolescents and reflects limitations in their cognitive development that constrain how they make sense of the world around them.
We can see these developmental stages in the writing of Youth Communication teens. Amber Perez, 18, faced a problem that would be very tough for anyone her age: living in a shelter. But as a teen, she still overestimated how other kids would respond. Though she acknowledged that “The shelter wasn't as bad as I thought it would be” because at least her family had a private room. Then she added, “Living in a shelter made me feel even more shy and withdrawn since I was ashamed of living there. Even if I did make friends, how could I tell them where I lived?”
When she started high school, she longed for friends. She writes:
The night before, I sat in my room with my mom and we talked for a while. “Maybe you should come out of your shell and talk to people. I know they'll like you. What's not to like about you?” my mom said. “What is there to like about me?” I thought to myself. “I'm not that pretty, I don't dress like everyone else, I don't have a lot of money, and I'm living in a shelter.”
I knew it would upset my mom to say these things out loud so I just said, “Yeah, you're right.” Even though my mom and I have a bond, I don't like telling her what's going on in my head. She gets too worried. It's already hard for me to open up, and her reactions only make things worse.
Amber did make a few friends, but she was ashamed to disclose that she lived in a shelter. Fortunately, she was assigned a school counselor who was sensitive to the fact that adolescents often feel like they are “the only one” and that life will never get better. Here, Amber describes how a skilled counselor helped her see her life in a larger frame:
After meeting with a few different counselors, I was assigned to Ms. Millie. She always has a smile on her face and every time she sees me she asks if I'm OK, and even when I say I'm fine she knows when I'm not telling the truth. We have a connection.
But even with Ms. Millie's counseling, I started feeling depressed. Besides living in a shelter and feeling ashamed about it, I was stressed by my constantly fighting siblings. I was messing up in school, disrespecting my teachers, and missing class. I told her I never knew life could be so complicated.
Ms. Millie helped me deal with it all. She'd often say: “I know you may feel alone right now but trust me, Amber, you're not. There are a lot of kids in this school who've been through what you're going through.” It felt good not being the only one. I felt a little less embarrassed. But I still refused to tell anyone where I was living.
She'd also say: “You want to be strong, Amber, for your family, but mostly for yourself. You deserve that. Create a distraction; get more involved. Sooner or later you'll be out of there.”
I took her advice and joined an all-girls club, called, “Her Story,” as well as youth court and youth service. I also figured the more clubs I was in, the more colleges would want me. And they did distract me, like she said.
In the beginning of my sophomore year I was still a little on the edge. But I kept my head up. “One day you're going to look back at all this and smile because you survived it,” my counselor told me. “Everything is going to work out, just keep holding on.”
I repeated those words to myself every day.
Ms. Millie helped me realize that living in a shelter is nothing to be ashamed of. I can now talk to my friends about my experience, and they don't judge me.
Ms. Millie helped me appreciate my strength. Sometimes I remind myself: Wow, I did this. I can get through anything. I brought my grades back up and made the honor roll, fought my shyness, made good friends, participated in a lot of clubs, and soon I'll be off to college. Three years ago, I never thought I'd have accomplished so much.
Amber's counselor supported her in a way that was developmentally and culturally responsive. She began by addressing her developmental need to feel emotionally supported by building a connection with her. She then provided Amber with specific support that addressed two aspects of her cognitive development: her belief that she was the only student living in a shelter and her fear that no one would be able to understand what that experience was like for her.
The Adolescent Brain Is Still Developing
In addition to being a physical and psychological process, development is also neurological. When educators like Millie help students like Amber change their thinking and their behavior, it can have a positive impact on their brain development.
Each domain of development is influenced by our brain, so the study of developmental psychology has benefited from improvements in neuroscience over the last few decades. Functional and structural MRIs have enabled researchers to better understand how the brain works, how it's shaped by certain experiences, and how it adapts under certain conditions.
One well-accepted concept related to the study of the brain is the idea of plasticity. Similar to the way in which plastic's flexibility allows it to be shaped in response to pressure, the brain is also flexible in terms of how it responds to life conditions and our experiences. For teachers, the concept of plasticity is critical because it helps us to understand that our students’ prior histories are not their destinies. While negative experiences can shape the brain in harmful ways, positive experiences can shape the brain in beneficial ways.
Research also reveals that neural connections that are used regularly become stronger and more complex. Conversely, the brain treats seldom used connections as nonessential and eventually prunes them away to enhance functioning. Much like pruning a tree to strengthen its remaining branches, this process—referred to as synaptic pruning—strengthens neural connections and makes cognitive processing more efficient.
We also know that the development of these synapses is influenced by our experiences. For example, learning things through different modalities or making connections between what we learn in one context and what we learn in another promotes synapse formation.8 This helps to explain why when our teachers connected something that we learned in our math class with something that we learned in our social studies class it helped us to learn it better. It also helps to explain why when teachers connect what students are learning in school to their lives outside of school it's so impactful for students. Those explicit connections between what they're learning in school and their lives outside of school strengthen neural connections that deepen their conceptual understanding.9
Amber learned to think differently and act differently, which made her a better student and happier person. But it's also likely that the changes in her thinking and behavior affected her brain development in positive ways, which further reinforced her ability to succeed. Conversely, had Amber not gotten support, both her behavior and her brain development might have suffered. The activities she began to participate in didn't just “distract” her; they helped to build new neural pathways.
Development Is Shaped by Multiple Settings
Another important way to think about how adolescents develop is to think about the different settings that influence development. My research is informed by the work of the late developmental psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner. His well-regarded theory is that development is influenced by our individual characteristics (such as our age, gender, race, or ethnicity) and our experiences within multiple settings that influence us all at the same time.10 He describes these experiences as “proximal” or up-close influences (such as our experiences within our families or our experiences in school) and “distal” or more distant influences (such as the type of jobs our parents had). He argues that we are influenced by the interplay between them (such as when parents’ work schedules make them unavailable to assist their children with homework).
