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Navigating culturally responsive teaching in ESL classroom

Tue, March 24, 11:45am to 1:15pm EDT (11:45am to 1:15pm EDT), Hyatt Regency Miami, Floor: 3rd, Foster I

Proposal

Culture can serve as a way to enhance the motivation of learners because it can create culturally responsive teaching, which is characterized by respect for diversity; engagement of the motivation of all learners; creation of a safe, inclusive, and respectful learning environment (Krasnof, 2016). In a culturally responsive classroom, effective teaching and learning occur in a culturally supported, learner-centered context, whereby the strengths students bring to school are identified, nurtured, and utilized to promote student achievement. Instructors, by recognizing students’ culture, can integrate the teaching materials with students’ cultural experience and respect their cultural diversity to enhance their positive participations in the class and to motivate them to learn. According to Hammond (2014), “An educator’s ability is to recognize students’ cultural displays of learning and meaning making and responding positively and constructively with teaching moves that use cultural knowledge as a scaffold to connect what the student knows to new concepts and content in order to promote effective information processing” (p. 15).

Culturally Responsive Classroom Management (CRCM) is an approach to running classrooms in a culturally responsive way, which will guide the management decisions that teachers make. The goal of classroom management is to create an environment in which students behave appropriately from a sense of personal responsibility, not from a fear of punishment or desire for a reward. As such the environment must acknowledge and be responsive to who are the students (cognitively, socially and emotionally). This study introduces how a culturally responsive teacher manage the classroom based on students’ backgrounds, rendering of social experiences, prior knowledge, and learning styles.

Digital storytelling process gives students the opportunity to include their heritage culture into the learning process at school. When teachers integrate the heritage culture, such as storytelling, into the authentic literacy processes, students find their heritage culture valuable. when Students have this opportunity to share their stories with their classmates then they feel more connection with their peers. Thus, they will know there are full of possibilities where they are interconnected with literacy and interdependent with each other. This study will examine how digital storytelling method could be used in ESL classroom.

Virtual reality devices rapidly become more affordable and more widely accessible. Many educational pioneers start to incorporate this technology into their classroom along with more VR educational resource available. The use of Google Earth as an application of VR is becoming increasingly popular to facilitate culturally responsive pedagogy. Through this VR application, students can zoom to their countries and find their houses, dive in for a 360° perspective with Street View, immerse in heritage environment and cultures and share them with classmates. It may bring the dual perspective of living in two distinct worlds together. This study will introduce culturally responsive teachers innovative ways to merge both the heritage culture and school culture together through virtual reality.

Movie excerpts are brilliant way for students to hear up-to-date authentic speech and be exposed to various culture. The use of movie excerpts in a classroom can have powerful affect on students because it enhances societal values while at the same time evoking meaning to a lesson (Ali, 2017). The idea or objective of this strategy is not to have a teacher sit back and show a whole movie as a lesson mismanaging classroom time, but rather skillfully and methodically applying film clips to lessons that equip ESL students with insight, formative comprehension, and culture discovery.

The purpose of this study is to provide four effective culturally responsive strategies based on Gloria Ladson-Billings’ culturally responsive teaching theory (1995). In this study, I will provide these strategies (classroom management, digital storytelling, virtual reality learning, and movie excerpts) for ESL teachers to implement them in their community college classroom. These practices for culturally responsive teaching are based on research findings, theoretical claims, practical experiences, and personal stories of educators researching and working with ESL students.

In summary, culturally responsive pedagogy strategies are effective in that it provides motivating tools that can enhance students’ motivation and behaviors in the ESL classroom through recognizing and weaving students’ unique culture into classroom instructional practice.

I believe that culturally responsive teaching is essential for community college ESL classes since ESL students’ attending community colleges come from different and diversified cultures and language backgrounds. From my point of view, the pedagogical implication of these proposed strategies in ESL classroom would be:
• Teachers must be culturally responsive, utilizing materials and examples, engaging in practices, and demonstrating values that include rather than exclude students from different backgrounds.
• Teachers should be active in incorporating culture into classroom activities that use student’s culture to scaffold English acquisition.
• Teachers should facilitate and challenge students to expand their learning and thinking patterns beyond the classroom and their own culture.

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