Student populations are becoming more diverse and schools need to begin to foster an educational environment that is culturally aware enough to include all ethnic backgrounds in the classroom. Becoming more cognizant of the many cultures and ethnic groups that make up the student body will not only encourage children to seek out and learn about people and places that are foreign to them, but create an inviting and inclusive learning experience in which every child may participate to the best of his or her ability. This includes maintaining a focus on parental engagement as well, schools can go one step further in their effort towards culturally responsive teaching by developing a method for parental involvement, particularly with children who hail from families that are underserved in the community. Studies have shown that a growing percentage of Hispanic students are part of families where the parents completed only a portion of their own education. In addition, many Hispanic parents have a difficulty with access to teachers due to cultural and language difficulties that may exist. Some of them may also be wary of initiating or continuing any contact with the school due to their legal status.

Cultural awareness isn’t only about tolerance of other cultures in the classroom it also requires a knowledge of the specific backgrounds and barriers of the families of minority students. Hispanic parents decline to keep communication with teachers and school staffs for a variety of reasons and teachers should be trained in how to properly navigate these issues. A number of these families don’t feel welcome at the school, they are uncomfortable in social interactions with teachers, or believe that the school does not hold the same values as they do for the well being of their child. There’s a perception among some families that the school treats their children differently than others because they come from low-income backgrounds or live in public housing. Proper cultural awareness requires that teachers are equipped to navigate these matters successfully in order to steer the children towards positive and meaningful academic outcomes. The value of training teachers in cultural awareness is found in the effect it can have on the student body from all walks of life.

Many schools and programs offer bilingual support from teachers who have learned the language of the majority of English Language Learners in the classroom and they make a concerted effort to engage with the parents of these children in their native tongue. It’s a way to acknowledge the sensitivity of the family while also attempting to bring them into the learning process of the student in order for that child to achieve his or her goals in class.

The Latino Family Literacy Project can help your school with being more culturally aware. This award-winning program has years of experience working with teachers and culturally diverse students and parents. If you’re interested in finding more information about this program schedule a training meeting. They offer both online webinar training and in person workshops.

If you’re interested in the latest information regarding culturally aware classrooms visit our Facebook and Twitter. We look forward to hearing from you.

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Hispanic culture is known to have strong oral traditions, expressed through storytelling, lyric poetry, riddles, jokes, folk prayers and incantations, songs, and many other formats. Samuel G. Armistead, author of Pan-Hispanic Oral Tradition, defines oral tradition as “any manifestation of folk culture that includes the use of language. Creativity, ongoing evolution, and chronological depth are also essential factors.” The University of North Carolina School of Education shares that “Mexico has a strong oral tradition, in which knowledge is passed down through generations via storytelling and the use of proverbs.” Proverbs are statements that share common sense advice in a sometimes metaphorical, concise, and pithy manner. The spoken word being used to impart knowledge and understanding through the use of proverbs, fables, songs, folklore, and other mediums is a central and enduring part of Hispanic familial and cultural routines and structures.

Oral Traditions Share Family Values and History

Oral traditions, such as storytelling, are different from the act of reading aloud because the storyteller knows the story, rhyme, or song by heart. The absence of a book and the storyteller’s use of variations in voice and gesture create a vividness and intimacy between the storyteller and the listeners. In an article called Building Bridges with Stories in The Storytelling Encyclopedia, Melissa Heckler and Carol Birch write, “The longevity of the oral tradition is a testimony to the power of the told story. Stories improve understanding by building bridges of intellectual, emotional, and spiritual connections among peoples.” One of the ways these powerful connections are built in the Hispanic storytelling tradition is within families. Stories may be shared while the family is resting, carrying out domestic tasks, gathered for socialization, or at other times. Many tales are passed down through generations from the old to the young. The young can learn about their family history, family roles, and the expectations and hopes that their family has for them through these stories.

Oral Traditions Transmit Culture

Oral traditions in Hispanic culture can also share information that extends beyond the immediate family to the culture as a whole. Young people may learn about roles in their community, cultural holidays, and important traditions. Members of a culture with a strong oral tradition use these narratives to better understand how to orient themselves in their culture. They will also begin to memorize and learn the songs, stories, and proverbs, which they in turn will pass down to the next generation, possibly with personal, contemporary changes or interpretations. As children’s author Uma Krishnaswami says in a video about the importance of intergenerational storytelling on Colorín Colorado, “The world is diminished in some way if stories from a number of groups of people aren’t shared and made available to everybody…storytelling is our heritage.” Oral traditions, such as storytelling, endure and evolve over time as the cultures they belong to evolve, and oral traditions continue to both record and affect people’s communal and individual identities and lives.

When Hispanic oral traditions are respected and integrated in classroom settings, all members of the educational community can benefit. The Hispanic members are able to feel culturally respected and supported by their school, while members from other cultures are given the opportunity to hear new stories, songs, and jokes and to experience diverse ways of learning.

Lectura Books  is a leading publisher of multicultural books and bilingual books with authentic stories. One popular book title is Maria de Flor. This book has a beautiful story about a family from Oaxaca, Mexico, that describes their deep-rooted tradition of how they celebrate their family members who are no longer here, but who they will always cherish. The Day of the Dead is a popular tradition and celebration from the Oaxaca region.

Visit Lectura Books Youtube page to watch a short clip of the book, Maria de Flor and to see many more examples of bilingual and bicultural books.

The post The Oral Traditions of Hispanics appeared first on The Latino Family Literacy Project.

The Latino Family Literacy Project helps parents to establish a family reading routine, and to build strong Spanish and English skills.

An anti-bias preschool curriculum is one that seeks to acknowledge and challenge prejudices in education and works to remove them from the teaching and learning environment. Schools using an anti-bias curriculum are acknowledging that many Western societies, though growingly diverse, continue to function with inherent inequity and racial cultural bias, and that this naturally carries over into education, which is intrinsically a sociocultural institution. Louise Derman-Sparks and Julie Olsen Edwards, authors of Anti-bias Education for Young Children and Ourselves, write that “Inequity of resources in society, and the biases we use to justify that inequity, have an enormous impact on children’s lives. The dynamics of advantage and disadvantage, deeply rooted in our history, continue to shape the degree of access children have to education, medical care, security . . .”

Their work, at the forefront of anti-bias education, seeks to reduce cultural bias and misinformation in classrooms and to help children and the adults who work with them in schools to respect each other and to respect people in general.

Anti-bias education encourages educators to examine their own biases and cultural identities so that they may have strong self-awareness and also be aware of negative messages they may inadvertently be sending to students. This process allows teachers and other staff to model having a positive cultural self-image for students and encourages adults to begin to counteract their own biases in the classroom. Children can notice differences between people early on and will notice how adults treat others, so actively teaching them to respect all people is a powerful and important choice. One of the central ways that teachers put anti-bias curriculum to work in early childhood education settings is by exploring and honoring each person’s identity and fostering acceptance of diversity in the classroom and community.

Ellen Wolpert, long term preschool director and author of Redefining the Norm: Early Childhood Anti-Bias Strategies, shares this description of the anti-bias curriculum at work with young children:

“Children make comparisons among themselves, looking at the ways they are both similar and different. They learn that different is OK. This creates the foundation for respecting and valuing differences beyond their own families and communities.”

Children who share stereotypes and biases can be engaged in conversation about the bias and presented with visual and narrative examples that contradict the bias. The site, Teaching for Change, which focuses on social justice in education, shares a wealth of anti-bias articles with activity recommendations and professional development activities covering identity development, anti-bias curriculum, language development, and family resources.

The focus in an anti-bias program is on encouraging everyone in the educational community, young and old, to learn about and explore cultural identities and to get to know one another and the world around them with an open mind. Dr. Francis Aboud, who studied prejudice amongst youth, found that “after age 9, racial attitudes tend to stay constant unless the child experiences a life-changing event.” This trend underscores the importance of the implementation of preschool anti-bias curriculum and the promotion of tolerance.

Lectura Books is one of the leading publishers of multicultural and bilingual books, focusing on publishing for Parent Involvement with Latino parents and kids.

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In today’s diverse world, being culturally responsive is a critical and necessary feature of a quality education. But what does it mean to be culturally responsive?

According to the National Center for Culturally Responsive Educational Systems (NCCREST), “cultural responsiveness is the ability to learn from and relate respectfully with people of your own culture as well as those from other cultures.” Now we can begin to spell out how to develop and sustain a culturally responsive school environment.

One of the most effective ways to bring cultural responsiveness into the school environment is to train teachers to be prepared for a diverse classroom and diverse families. In many ways, teachers are the facilitators and mediators between the overall school culture and the families and their children who attend the school. They orchestrate a series of social interactions and social contexts on a continuous basis. To do this well, teachers need training in cultural responsiveness.

It starts by making sure that teachers believe in their students and in their desire to learn. A focused effort to understand a student’s cultural context needs to be made when students from different backgrounds arrive at the school. All students want to have a sense of belonging. One way teachers can accomplish this is to be able to learn from and relate respectfully with the students and with their students’ parents.

This also means creating the opportunities and the conditions for academic success for children from diverse backgrounds. By being culturally responsive, that is, being respectful of their backgrounds and home cultures, teachers can reach out to parents in an open way to source the parents’ own well of knowledge. Parents come to the school environment with their own well of cultural knowledge. Teachers need to tap into that knowledge and build a communications exchange that works for both teachers and parents.

A culturally responsive approach also helps teachers realize that one’s culture is central to learning. The way we receive information and process it is culturally based. When teachers recognize that and incorporate that into their work, the classroom experience is enriched. At the same time, it helps to build students’ cultural references into all aspects of learning.

Imagine a spectrum that goes from the home to the classroom. Within that spectrum are the activities of the classroom, what happens on the playground, what books are in the school library, how parent events at the school are organized, and the learning moments in the home itself. The goal for a culturally responsive teacher is to help ensure that every point in the spectrum is not only a learning opportunity but is also culturally responsive.

There is a long-term practical aspect to all this. Culturally responsive teachers and schools play an essential role in career preparation. By creating and sustaining a culturally responsive classroom environment, teachers help students learn to collaborate and communicate with the different cultures and backgrounds found in the 21st century work environment both here in the United States and abroad.

Finally, schools and administrators must take a proactive approach to creating cultural responsiveness by finding teacher training programs and opportunities that highlight a culturally responsive approach. It’s up to you at your school to make a difference and set the tone.

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