Helping teachers respect differences: Expo workshops aim at 'cultural competency' By Andy Gammill

Helping teachers respect differencesExpo workshops aim at 'cultural competency'By Andy Gammillandy.gammill@indystar.com When new Spanish-speaking students arrive in Leroy Robinson's class, he asks what country they're from. Other teachers might expect the answer to be Mexico. But by asking, Robinson finds he has students from places like Honduras and Guatemala -- and makes a connection he hopes leads children to be more open to learning. Such steps toward sensitivity and empathy are a cornerstone of new policies and lessons for teachers bridging cultural gaps with students. That "cultural competency" has become more important beyond schools in Marion County -- where 86 percent of teachers are white, compared with fewer than half the students -- to suburbs with growing numbers of black and Latino children. Some educators hope better connections between teachers and kids who lack common roots could help poor students and black and Hispanic children pull up state test scores that lag those of their more affluent white and Asian peers. A series of workshops for educators Friday at Indiana Black Expo will explore how teachers can make those connections. Indiana law requires schools to train teachers in such cultural competency, but there is debate over which approach may be best. The Expo workshops will address that debate directly. The event also includes a speech from controversial author Ruby Payne, a white educator who writes about how teachers can foster understanding with poor students. She will be joined at the event by her chief critic, Jawanza Kunjufu. He is among those who argue that her focus on poverty is misplaced and ignores the unique cultural aspects of the black community. After Brownsburg Schools adopted Payne's book for training, parents of three black students filed complaints with the Indiana Civil Rights Commission, leading to more tension. But such controversy has been rare in Central Indiana schools, most of which have embraced the chance to reach out. Some suggest that teachers who unwittingly disregard -- or even disparage -- a child's cultural upbringing have an impact on that child's learning. "If you want to bring them up to speed and get them to perform better, you're going to have to make a connection with them," said Robinson, a teacher at Fall Creek Valley Middle School in Lawrence Township. "You can always connect, but your chances are better when you understand the cultural makeup of the kids." His classroom efforts, which also include welcoming Muslim students with a traditional Arabic greeting, are among examples of how teachers can use cultural competency skills to help students learn. Education experts say that teachers have a moral obligation to avoid unfair assumptions about students from other cultures. Traditional efforts to raise teacher awareness of other cultures have focused on helping the predominantly white teachers in urban schools understand the backgrounds of black children. But they now focus as much on helping middle-class teachers understand the impacts of poverty, American-born teachers to realize differences in Latin American cultures and teachers of all races to see contrasts in parenting styles. It is essential for every teacher of any race to examine the stereotypes they may hold, and how those affect their classroom interactions, said Khaula Murtadha, an education professor at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. "With those assumptions that are made about children of different cultural backgrounds, we can see lower grades, we see higher dropout rate," she said. Because teachers build on what children already know, when they understand "a child's cultural background, they scaffold on that child's knowledge." Children begin to tune out when teachers send subtle clues they don't respect a child or seem exasperated by behaviors that a child sees as common among family members, Murtadha said. "The child begins to be quiet, not even trying to engage. Their hand doesn't go up," she said. "You see them just sitting there." Nationally, 35 percent of all students believe no teacher at school cares about them, and studies show that students who feel disconnected from school are more likely to tune out from their lessons and eventually drop out. About 59 percent of poor students and 57 percent of black students in Indiana graduate from high school in four years, compared with 84 percent of more affluent students and 80 percent of white students who do. Students say they can tell when a teacher doesn't understand them or treats them differently. David Anderson, an eighth-grader at the Fall Creek Academy charter school, said he has had teachers who assumed he would cause trouble or be stupid because he is black. Some spoke much more slowly when addressing him than they did with students who weren't black, he said. "Some teachers judge you because your color, that you're going to come off a certain way," he said. "You can just tell by their reaction and the way they act." His principal, Anita Silverman, teaches a course in cultural competency at the University of Indianapolis. Silverman said she often sees teachers who assume that a poor child has a troubled background or refuse to pronounce a child's complicated name and instead shorten it without their permission. Other teachers and schools, she said, are quick to give a black boy a special education label of "emotionally handicapped" when a white boy doing the same things gets the more mild label of "attention deficit disorder." Discussing those topics can be uncomfortable for teachers, Silverman said. "It's a hard topic to bring up," she said. "Teachers are beautiful people, but to admit it is saying we're weak, and we don't want to fail our kids."