Working Toward a More

Jessica Ellison, MNHS Teacher Education

Culturally Relevant Classroom

mnhs.org/ium

Jessica Ellison

Minnesota Historical Society

jessica.ellison@mnhs.org

1860 Census, Hollis, Maine. 4th-great grandfather.

Our Grant Project

Inquiry in the Upper Midwest

• Webinars
• CRP Instructional Videos
• District In-Service PD
• Summer Institutes

mnhs.org/ium

GOAL: Provide resources & instruction to support CRP using primary sources.

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Today’s session goals

• Connect the dots between culturally relevant pedagogy and primary sources
• Discuss four strategies to move toward a culturally relevant classroom
• Gather resources

Culturally Relevant Pedagogy

What is culture?

Culture is ways of knowing.

What is

Culturally Relevant Pedagogy?

It’s NOT:

...a checklist

...a script

...a curriculum

What is

Culturally Relevant Pedagogy?

• Teaching framework
• Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings, 1991
• Based on teachers of academically successful African American students.

What does this look like in class?

• Examining curriculum with a CRP lens
• Empowering students to ask questions
• Co-constructing knowledge with students

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What does this look like in class?

When you watched the intro video:

• How did students engage with primary sources?
• How did teachers describe their CRP instruction?

Connecting the Dots

• CRP empowers students to develop their cultural competence and question the status quo
• Culture and critical questioning are vital to social studies

Connecting the Dots

• Social studies: the ways that humans navigate their world
• Students need tools to understand the world they’re in now and the world they’ll be in later

Connecting the Dots

• Kids can’t wait until middle school to learn social studies skills and process social studies content
• Kids can’t leave school thinking that social studies doesn’t apply to them or doesn’t include them
• A CRP lens can be a guide

Strategies for a Culturally Relevant Classroom

Culturally Relevant Classroom

Let’s Dig into Four Strategies

1. Get to know your students
2. Examine your curriculum
3. Shift your language
4. Replace or add primary sources

Culturally Relevant Classroom

Let’s Dig into Four Strategies

• Get to know your students
• Examine your curriculum
• Shift your language
• Replace or add primary sources

Culturally Relevant Classroom

Let’s Dig into Four Strategies

• Get to know your students
• Examine your curriculum
• Shift your language
• Replace or add primary sources

Culturally Relevant Classroom

Let’s Dig into Four Strategies

• Get to know your students
• Examine your curriculum
• Shift your language
• Replace or add primary sources

Culturally Relevant Classroom

Let’s Dig into Four Strategies

• Get to know your students
• Examine your curriculum
• Shift your language
• Replace or add primary sources

Culturally Relevant Classroom

Get to know your students

• How do they identify?
• How can you learn more about their needs, successes, and struggles?
• How do students change over time?
• How can you co-construct knowledge with your students?

Culturally Relevant Classroom

Identity charts

Culturally Relevant Classroom

Debrief

1. What did you choose to include?
2. Did you leave anything out? Why?
3. How does it feel when someone ignores identity characteristics central to who you are?

Identity Charts support CRP because they help you to:

Study your students’ identity characteristics

Recognize students as multicultural, dynamic individuals

Strategize ways to use their cultural competence in your lessons

Draw connections between students’ identities & the curriculum

Culturally Relevant Classroom

Examine your curriculum

• What am I already teaching?
• What meaningful questions do I ask students to address?
• Are my students’ diverse experiences reflected in my curriculum?
• Are my resources relevant to students?

Culturally Relevant Classroom

How can government influence the way we live?

Culturally Relevant Classroom

How can government influence the way we live?

Culturally Relevant Classroom

Has immigration been key to America’s success?

Culturally Relevant Classroom

Has immigration been key to America’s success?

“What horror and destruction—it's impossible for me to describe—or you to form any idea of it... A great part of the buildings throughout the Island are levelled to the ground—almost all the rest very much shattered—several persons killed and numbers utterly ruined.” Source

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“The war started when I was 8. One night militia tried to break into our home, and the exterior was riddled with bullets. My family left our neighborhood, passing through dead bodies and debris… I no longer had a bed of my own, the privacy of a shower in my own bathroom — we were essentially homeless.” Source

Culturally Relevant Classroom

Shift your language

• Is my language inclusive of race, gender, sexual orientation, and socio-economic status?
• Does my language assume things about my students?
• Who can I learn from?

Culturally Relevant Classroom

Slave

Enslaved

Culturally Relevant Classroom

Home

Where we live

Culturally Relevant Classroom

Sioux Uprising

US-Dakota War

Culturally Relevant Classroom

Replace or add primary sources

• Am I using primary sources that focus on a single narrative?
• Where are the absences in the historical narratives I teach?
• Do my primary sources reinforce stereotypes?
• Are my students’ identities represented in my sources?

Culturally Relevant Classroom

“It was we, the people, not we, the white male citizens, nor yet, we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union … And it is a downright mockery to talk to women of their enjoyment of the blessings of liberty while they are denied the use of the only means of securing them provided by this democratic- republican government—the ballot.”

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--Susan B. Anthony, “Is It a Crime for a Citizen of the United States to Vote?”, 1872

Culturally Relevant Classroom

“If woman's own happiness has been ignored or misunderstood in our country's legislating ... let her rest her plea, not on Indian inferiority, nor on Negro depravity, but on the obligation of legislators to do for her as they would have others do for them were relations reversed.”

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--Anna Julia Cooper, A Voice from the South, 1892

Culturally Relevant Classroom

Where are the resources?

Culturally Relevant Classroom

How can I learn more about CRP and teaching in a culturally relevant way?

• Visit the Inquiry in the Upper Midwest site
• There are many others doing this work
• Teaching Tolerance
• Facing History and Ourselves

Teaching Tip: Like most learning, this is a process and shifts each year with a new class of students.

Culturally Relevant Classroom

How do I begin to shift toward CRP?

• Acknowledge that culture is fluid, dynamic and changing
• Study your students’ identities and assets
• Identify the absent narratives and underrepresented stories
• Develop essential questions and inquiries

Teaching Tip: Find a mentor, colleague, or PLC to collaborate with on this journey.

Culturally Relevant Classroom

How can I find new sources?

• Recorded webinar on finding and evaluating sources
• Peruse curated sets of primary sources
• Library of Congress
• Digital Public Library of America
• Inquiry in the Upper Midwest
• State Historical Society of Iowa
• MD Humanities and MD Public Television

Teaching Tip: Have students curate their own sets of sources, based on what speaks to them.

Culturally Relevant Classroom

Where else can I find primary sources?

• Find your favorite repositories
• Library of Congress
• National Archives DocsTeach
• State/local historical societies
• Museums

Teaching Tip: Create a Google Doc or spreadsheet to keep track of useful sites.

Culturally Relevant Classroom

Final thoughts

• Our students have much to teach us

• As educators, we need to practice Cultural Humility: personal reflection and growth around culture

• We can honor students’ lived experiences by offering sources that challenge them, encourage their expertise, and empower them to critique the narrative

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mnhs.org/ium

bit.ly/MaineCRP

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jessica.ellison@mnhs.org

Primary Sources

• Looking Backward, 1912
• Teacher at PS 1, Manhattan, with six Chinese children, 1964
• Africa map, 1908
• Sanborn Fire Insurance Map, Augusta, Maine, 1918
• Plant hardiness zone map, 2012
• Washington D.C. student council meeting, 1942
• Girls in Hmong dress at Walnut Grove mural, 2012
• Fritzi Scheff seated in automobile, 1913
• Driving Teen, free stock photo
• Richard Mills, 8 years old, showing a severely cut finger. Eastport, Maine. 1911
• Minnie Thomas, 9 years old, showing average size of sardine knife used in cutting. 1911
• John Chinaman on the railroad, 1867

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• Young doffer and spinner boys, 1912
• Mexican beet workers, 1937
• Alexander Hamilton, 1806
• Ilhan Omar, 2018
• Don’t Call Me Girl, 1976
• Picking cotton on a Georgia plantation, 1858
• The abolition of the slave trade, 1792
• Reimagining Norman Rockwell’s Four Freedoms, “Freedom from Fear,” 2018
• Dakota Attacking Camp
• Dakota Concentration Camp, 1862-1863
• Bayard Rustin, 1963
• Portrait of Mahalia Jackson, 1962
• Susan B. Anthony (photo), 1870
• Susan B. Anthony (speech), 1872
• Anna Julia Cooper (photo), 1901-1903
• Anna Julia Cooper (book, p. 124), 1892
• Government Indian School, 1907
• Dakota spelling cards, 1960s