Culturally Relevant Pedagogy a Response to Irvine

Irvine's article was short, sweet, and to the point; providing a basic foundation for culturally relevant teaching. There are many films out there that glamorize the field of teaching, making it's hardships seem like simple obstacles everyone can over come in just one shot. Irvine uses an un-named teacher's experiences to show that it may, at times, be difficult to engage one's students in a way that guarantees content retention. She then goes on to show that if you learn to harness your sense of creativity, culturally relevant pedagogy can often be the best way to ensure said content retention. "Culturally relevant teaching requires the teacher to possess a thorough knowledge of the content and employ multiple representations of knowledge that use students’ lived experiences to connect new knowledge to home, community, and global settings" (Irvine 2009). That being said, there will be instances when someone attempts to implement a given strategy that may backfire completely. Teaching is very much an experimental process in which we form a hypothesis, create a variable and control group, and test different strategies against the hypothesis to see what works and what doesn't. "Monica's" first attempt to use the cultures of her students as a basis for learning backfired initially. The students did not learn, but they did appear to have fun. An activity that involves memorization of content can be beneficial if used as a mnemonic but if it is simply used for entertainment purposes the content will not stick. The later example of writing a letter to the mayor as a means to learn formal letter writing was culturally relevant, exciting, and got the information to "stick." School is not necessarily supposed to be "fun," but that doesn't mean it can't be. Children are more willing to take the time to understand your content if you take the time to understand THEM. In an area where students are unable to afford a gameboy, you would not have them do an activity that assumes they have access to one. If we expect our students to learn, then we must do the same. It is important that we take the time to understand what is important or endearing to the communities we choose to engage ourselves in. For example, if I were to teach a lesson on cultural diffusion in the United States a culturally responsive practice might be to have students interview someone from a different background other than their own, and to bring in a dish or an item that comes from their subject's home country. This will promote cultural understanding in a fun and meaningful way.