Chapter 3: Cultural Response in Classrooms

This week's reading touched on a lot of important aspects of developing literacy for English learners. While teachers of ESL are familiar with all of these approaches, it is important for content-area teachers to learn strategies that will benefit English learners. In fact, these methods will benefit all students, struggling and proficient learners alike.

One of the most important aspects of developing literacy for English learners is integrating multicultural texts into the curriculum. For immigrants or students who speak a language other than English at home, this serves to draw on background knowledge and show students their cultural perspective is valued at school. The text offers a good list of questions on page 56 to see whether a certain text should be included in the classroom. It is important that multicultural perspectives are included in a meaningful way, using the transformative approach, as the authors describe it. Other approaches, especially in content-area classrooms, reflect "the surface level of a culture but does not make provision for in-depth study of its deeper elements" (p. 55).

An excellent way to include different cultural perspectives in a classroom is through the use of Funds of Knowledge (Moll, L, 1994). Funds of Knowledge seeks to incorporate knowledge that is valued in the community into the classroom curriculum. For instance, seeing that a student's parent is a builder in the community, a math unit could be developed around building a house or a social studies unit focused on different building materials in different cultures. This information is gathered through home interviews with students' families using an ethnographic approach that is non-judgmental. Next week, for another class at St. Thomas, I will be conducting a Funds of Knowledge interview with a Hmong woman and learning more about the values and strengths of that community. My professor explained that even a mediocre school using a Funds of Knowledge approach would be wildly successful, and it is especially important for recent immigrants and long-term English learners.

Inherent in this approach is the importance of valuing students' native languages and including them in the classroom. Often, schools think that English-only education benefits students by immersing them in a language that is necessary for their future success. However, the authors note that "when immigrant students maintain a strong identification with their culture and native language, they are more likely to succeed academically, and they have more positive self-concepts about their ability to learn" (p. 66). It is also important to note that any knowledge students have of their L1 will transfer to their L2, so it is in everyone's best interest for students to maintain proficiency in their native language.

Another important point that the chapter touches on is the difficulty students face when their background differs from the school culture and the assumptions that lie there within. Particularly for newly arrived students or those with interrupted or limited formal schooling, they may be unfamiliar with the expectations of teachers and the school in general. For these students, it is crucial that teachers are explicit with their expectations. The introduction of a classroom routine can also help students acclimate and understand school culture.