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Reading Time! 

This was an easy read. A good read. Like, a really really good read. 

Culturally Responsive Pedagogies/Overview - What is Culturally Responsive teaching? 
- The Education Hub 

We, as teachers need to move beyond cultural blindness to cultural responsiveness. But what does it look like, you ask? Well, let me share with you my takeaways....

• Culturally Responsive Teaching is
- validating the diverse knowledge and practices of our students.
- comprehensive as it incorporates preferred ways of knowing and the cultural and life experiences of students as well as the history and culture of the group.
- empowering and transformative as it transforms the way students see themselves in terms of their personal efficacy. It is transformative and emancipatory in that it reveals that multiple versions of 'truth' are valid and no single version is total and permanent.

• Culturally responsive pedagogies can reduce the gaps between the highest and lowest achievers while at the time raising overall levels of achievement.

• The biggest influence on student achievement is the quality of teaching.

• Culturally responsive teaching is about making school learning relevant and effective for learners by drawing on students' cultural knowledge, life experiences, frames of reference, languages, and performance and communication styles. This means making what the students know, and how they know it, the foundation of learning and teaching interactions and curriculum.

• The beliefs and attitudes that we hold as teachers are crucial to our ability in making a difference.

• The importance of moving beyond surface-level understandings of cultures, such as food, music etc, and try to gain an understanding of the variance within a cultural group.

• Teach 'to and through' students' frames of references.

This is yet, another great read that reinforces and supports changing teacher practice to improve student outcome.