Culturally Inclusive

Classrooms
EDL 272 FBLA
 Problem
Chronic Absenteeism rates with major discrepancies:
-All students: 30%
-White males: 18%
-Black males: 56%
**Chronic absenteeism = absent for more than 10% of total instructional minutes**
-Is it instructional?
-Is it the culture of the building?
-How do Black students feel about their opportunities for learning?
 Data Points (Part 1)
• Attendance rates: Black males (82%), Latinx males (84%), and White males (89%)
• Cogenerative Dialogues with 20 Black males identified several trends: “tasks are
irrelevant, teacher does not monitor my learning or relate to me culturally, and I
fade into the background of the class when I do not feel confident in my skills”
• Behavior Referral data: highest number of referrals for African American males – 200+
Level 2 Out of Bounds referrals recorded
• Students in hallways during class with passes for extended periods of time or who never
made it to class: majority African American males
Student Narratives
 Data Points (Part 2)
• Walkthrough data: only 30% of students engaged in the learning in 50+
walkthroughs and less than 10% of classrooms employing any Culturally
Inclusive Practices
• 8% of Black males on track for college/career readiness in 9th/10th
grade Math vs. 36% of students overall
• 29% of Black males on track for college/career readiness in 9th/10th
grade Reading vs. 61% of students overall
 Opportunity for Improvement

Implementing culturally relevant curriculum and tasks

along with building sense of belonging to elevate students
to high levels of learning in every classroom all year
 Archetype: Escalation (pg 395)

white teachers vs. non-white students – threatening individual teaching lens and
moving away from punitive behavior responses – teachers feel their needs not met –
students who are non-white feel their needs aren’t met by their white teachers who do
not understand them and who do not support them – centralizing race causes white
teachers to become defensive of their actions
Examples in action: Tier 1 Behavior meetings, cogenerative dialogues with students
and with teachers
Solution(s): CIP for students and clarified restorative practices and revised behavior
plan for TRHS with extensive support/training
 Lack of engagement for learning by students of color +
Chronic absenteeism achievement gaps for students of color

Teaching through personal lens from experience

without consideration of cultural responsiveness +
Out of bounds – hallway
emphasizing punitive behavior consequences
wandering – avoiding class

Related laws:
-There is no blame
-Cause and Effect are not closely related in time and space
-The easy way out usually leads back in
-Today’s problems are yesterday’s solutions
 Learning Disability: “The enemy is out there”
(pg 19)
• Teachers seeing individual students to blame for chronic absenteeism, increased behaviors,
and low achievement

• Teachers blaming home life and society for student behaviors

• Teachers blaming administrators for a lack of strict behavior rules to enforce with students
to “make them learn the ways of the world”

• Lack of teacher efficacy

 Current Reality: Classrooms
• Teacher-centered
• Classrooms with very little collaboration or opportunity for social interaction around a
task
• Monitoring for compliance but not engagement for learning
• Lack of Culturally Inclusive Practices – most materials/tasks have been unchanged
over course of 5 years – most teachers only have 1 course to plan
• Lack of rigorous Level 3 tasks: most tasks at retrieval and comprehension levels
 Ideal State: Classrooms
• Student-centered with rigor
• Culturally Inclusive Practices embedded into each lesson
• Opportunities for students to bring cultural wealth of knowledge into their
learning and to co-teach their peers through collaboration around tasks
• All tasks living at the analysis and knowledge utilization levels
• Students leading the learning, so teachers can monitor for their development
of proficiency in each skill/target
 Culturally Inclusive Practices
• Visioning collective equity definition (Sept-Oct)
• Visioning around culturally inclusive practices with all staff and identification of early implementers
(Sept-Nov)
• Consensogram to come to a decision on 6 major elements: Student Voice, Real World
Problems/Diverse Texts, Students as Co-Teachers/Collaborators, Rigorous Tasks, Social/Emotional
Learning, and Cogenerative Dialogues (Sept-Oct)
• Coaching Tool/Rubric and POPE Protocol to develop implementation with input of staff (Oct-Nov)
• Implementation phases with admin coaching (Dec-May)
-phase 1 from Dec 3 – Dec 21 and phase 2 from Jan 18 – May 31
Student Narratives
 Current Snapshot
Experimentation Phase w/ teachers – 3 PD sessions before Dec 21
• Coaching of admin practicing using lesson plans they create for each element
then “coaching” each other during workshop sessions each week during Dec
• Teacher reflection and planning using coaching tool in PLCs and then in
classrooms
• Electronic coaching tool – admin calibration during walkthrough by teacher
invite for ALL teachers during month of Dec
 Implementation Data
• PD staff/student surveys – Student Voice PD/Element Planning PD
• Staff one-on-one coaching sessions, coaching tool results
• Student interviews
• Attendance/Behavior/Achievement data used to identify root cause