Keeping It Real and Relevant

Building Authentic Relationships in Your Diverse Classroom

Ignacio Lopez

• Publisher: ASCD
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781416624400
• eBook ISBN: 9781416624431
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Teaching Methods

How can we ensure that all students, regardless of cultural background or socioeconomic status, are granted equitable opportunities to succeed in the classroom and beyond? In Keeping It Real and Relevant: Building Authentic Relationships in Your Diverse Classroom, author and veteran educator Ignacio Lopez offers hard-won lessons that educators at all levels can apply to teaching, assessing, counseling, and designing interventions for learners from all walks of life. These insights are all rooted in the same core principle: building deep and meaningful relationships with students is the key driver of their success.

In addition to examining the pivotal role of relationship-building among teachers and students in preparing the latter to perform at the highest level, this book offers

• Real-life examples of challenging classroom situations, each with a detailed breakdown of how they were peacefully and non-punitively resolved;
• Strategies for designing learning environments suited to the individual needs of students and reflective of their cultural backgrounds;
• Ideas for scaffolding students as they experience and internalize epiphanies about what works and what doesn't, both academically and behaviorally; and
• Activities and reflection questions for use in professional development.

Many teachers find balancing the needs of increasingly diverse classrooms made up of learners from increasingly diverse backgrounds to be a difficult and often thankless task—and one that takes precious time away from instructional planning. Here, Lopezoutlines simple but ingenious steps for addressing these needs holistically, in a way that takes no extra time yet amply enhances the learning experience for students. Clear, practical, and much-needed, Keeping It Real and Relevant is the ultimate blueprint for creating a harmonious and successful classroom for kids of all colors, creeds, and cultures.

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Chapter 1

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Self-Awareness: Relationship-Building in Diverse Classrooms

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Every teacher understands that building positive relationships with students is essential to ensuring their success in school. Unfortunately, too many student-teacher relationships today are based on false pretenses or faulty assumptions; what a disservice we do to our students' potential when our perceptions of them are based only on rumor or asides from other teachers ("Oh, you've got him this year. Good luck!"). Creating successful and equitable learning environments for our students means committing to the fact that every learner has a compelling life story worth getting to know. Our role as teachers is to help students uncover, for themselves, how personal identities and learning habits developed outside of school might inform their success in the classroom.

Student Assumptions About Teachers: The Case of Ms. H

Just as teachers make assumptions about students, students, too, make assumptions about teachers. Building relationships in the classroom is a two-way street.

Consider the following example. A few years ago, during my time as a school administrator, a young teacher approached me in the hallway.

"Dr. Lopez," she said, "you wouldn't believe what just happened in my class! One of my students thought I was rich! We were discussing The Great Gatsby, and Miguel mentioned how white people have a lot of money—'Just like you, right Ms. H?,' he said. I told him the truth—that I live in my parents' basement and don't have any hot water!"

Ms. H was a white woman teaching in a predominately Latino school. Clearly, some students in her class associated her identity with wealth. I applauded Ms. H for her effort to continue the conversation with her students and to break down stereotypes. Though she wasn't entirely comfortable, Ms. H engaged her class in a dialogue about the dangers of making assumptions. At the same time, it occurred to me that it was April—why were her students only now discovering that she lived with her parents and had no hot water? To create an honest learning space, we need to begin unpacking assumptions and realities with students in our classrooms sooner rather than later.

What assumptions do you think students make of you? How have you engaged students in honest conversations regarding their assumptions about you versus the reality?

Self-Awareness Strategies: Unpacking Assumptions, Discovering Realties

Self-awareness is the ability to accurately judge one's own performance and behavior and to respond appropriately to different social situations—a skill vital to student success. The following activities for instilling self-awareness can help both students and teachers distinguish assumptions from realities in the classroom, and can lay the foundation for courageous conver-sations about race, socioeconomic status, and other such sensitive issues as the year goes on. I encourage teachers to conduct these activities alongside their students and to be the first to share their work.

Assumptions About My Teacher

Prior to meeting with your students, make a list of 8 to 10 questions about yourself that they will answer as a whole group. You may create a slideshow out of your questions or simply write them on the board. Some sample questions:

• Where do you think I was born?
• What's my favorite color?
• What's my favorite cartoon?
• What do you think I like to do for fun?
• What kind of car do you think I drive?

Have students respond to your questions and list all their responses on the board. After all the questions are answered, reveal the true answers to each of them one by one. Ask your students to reflect on their assumptions versus the realities. If students' assumptions were correct, ask them why they felt this was so.

Two Masks

Students create two different masks: one showing how others perceive them, and one showing how they feel on the inside. As the teacher, you should begin by sharing your masks with the whole group. (I have seen teachers draw witch-like features on the mask, showing how they're perceived, and music notes, pets, or children on the other mask.) Discuss with students how we often get so hung up on how we want others to "see us" that we fail to share our real selves. Students then break into pairs to discuss why they drew their masks the way they did. As you walk around, pay special attention to students who exhibit courage by sharing deep and perhaps uncomfortable feelings.

The Johari Window

Developed by U.S. psychologists Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham in the 1950s, the Johari Window is a simple strategy that teachers can use for understanding self-awareness and personal development, improving classroom communication, building interpersonal relationships, and fostering positive group dynamics. The idea is to have students fill in the four quadrants in Figure 1.1 and discuss in a small group or one-on-one with the teacher:

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Figure 1.1. The Johari Window

What I See in Me

What Others See in Me: The Public Self:

What Others Do Not See in Me: The Private Self:

What I Do Not See in Me

What Others See in Me: The Blind Self:

What Others Do Not See in Me: The Undiscovered Self:

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1. The Public Self. What is widely known both to us and to others (e.g., name, height, race, neighborhood).
2. The Blind Self. What others know about us, but that we don't know about ourselves (e.g., when a teacher sees in a student his ability to be a great leader or communicator, although the student does not see it in himself).
3. The Private Self. What we keep hidden from others (e.g., unpleasant feelings, insecurities, not-so-great experiences).
4. The Undiscovered Self. What neither we nor others know or recognize (e.g., undiscovered skills or potential).

Distribute a handout of the Johari Window to all students and talk them through each of the four quadrants as they fill them in. In discussing each of the quadrants, both you and your students gain a better appreciation for what other people do and don't see in them. Though students may initially be wary about sharing, collaborative discussion usually leads to more and more opening up. As students provide one another with feedback, they start to see themselves through one another's eyes. Moving from one quadrant to the next together allows students to develop mutual trust, share hopes and dreams, and find things in common.

The process of collaborating on the Johari Window activity mirrors what happens more broadly over time in school: students and teachers become more comfortable with one another and with revealing more and more about themselves.

Rules of Engagement

This activity is meant to prime students for engaging in safe and respectful classroom conversations. It's a good idea to do this activity at the beginning of the school year or in response to incidents of bullying or intolerance.

Begin by having students break into small groups. Then share the following prompt, either on a handout or on the board: What will it take for you to feel safe and comfortable when having conversations about race, ethnicity, or culture? In their groups, students discuss and create lists of 5 to 10 rules for feeling safe and comfortable in such situations. When they're done, choose five volunteers to share their rules. You can then create a large poster featuring the shared rules.

Here are some examples of rules of engagement that I've seen students come up with:

• Listen with an open mind.
• Don't call people names.
• Be open to constructive criticism.
• Make sure conversations are open to everyone.
• Don't use bad words.
• Respect those who are speaking.
• Be willing to see multiple points of view.

Minority-Majority Moments

This strategy is suitable for older students, as well as for teachers and school leaders. Before conducting the activity, ensure that the group has completed the Rules of Engagement activity, which will help them set the tone and create a safe space for conversations.

The Minority-Majority Moments activity allows individuals to discuss times when they've felt like part of a minority or a majority. These discussions help participants develop understanding of and empathy for one another and have a long-lasting effect throughout the school year. To begin, participants spend 5 to 10 minutes reflecting on and writing about one time they were in a minority and one time they were in a majority. Then, either in small groups or as a whole group, students discuss the experiences they wrote about.

Student Assumptions About Teachers: The Case of Mr. B

Mr. B was a white man teaching in a predominantly Latino high school. Every day, Mr. B would walk into his sixth-period class and hear his students telling jokes about his clothes, or his hair, or the brown paper bag he used to carry his lunch. The students were not so kind to Mr. B, but he kept showing up every day, trying really hard to engage his students with music, comics, fun articles—anything he could think of to "hook" his students.

One year, around the fourth week of school, Mr. B approached me. "Dr. Lopez, I've had it!" he said. "I don't know what to do. My students don't like me … and I'm really getting the feeling they don't trust me." He asked if I would sit in his classroom and observe him and his students. I agreed.

The next day, I sat in on Mr. B's sixth-period class. Mr. B was at the front of the room writing the day's objectives on the board and greeting the students as they walked in. I noticed that when he'd turn his back to write, a couple of students standing behind him would hike their pants up in a "nerd-like" fashion and point their fingers at the rest of the students, who would laugh. Throughout the class period, students would make fun of the way Mr. B talked, speaking in exaggeratedly nasal voices. At one point, when students were working in small groups, someone threw some balled-up paper across the room, hitting Mr. B in the head. Mr. B gave me a look—Do you see what I mean?—and yelled at his students to cut it out. Two students responded by repeating Mr. B in a mocking tone.

Mr. B needed help with classroom management, that was for sure. But something else was going on: it seemed as though some students really wanted to engage, but were just too distracted.

After class, I sat with Mr. B and asked him where he thought he was losing his students. He mentioned his grouping technique, discussed the flow of his instruction, and then commented on the two boys in front of the class who were making fun of him. I asked him to elaborate on that. He thought for a moment before answering: "They keep mocking me like I'm some white guy." Mr. B was frustrated that his students didn't know who he really was. I challenged him to start class the next day with a conversation about who he and his students really are.

What happened next and over the course of the school year astounded me.

As I sat in the back of Mr. B's room the next day, students filed into the classroom and were greeted by the following question on the board: "Am I a white man?"

Some of the students looked perplexed. When the two troublemakers from the day before entered, they read the question and quickly answered out loud: "Hell yeah, you're a white man!"

Mr. B told the boys to sit down. "What makes me a white man?" he asked.

The students started murmuring among themselves. One said, "You're white, and you sound like white people."

Patiently and calmly, Mr. B pushed for more information. "What does it mean to sound white?" he asked.

The conversation opened up as more students joined in. A debate soon formed about sounding "white" versus "Mexican" or "Puerto Rican." The conversation then turned back to Mr. B, unveiling assumptions about where Mr. B was born, the types of music he liked, and more. The more Mr. B revealed about himself, the more they, too, opened up about their home environments and personal experiences they'd had related to their ethnicity. Mr. B needed to enter a courageous conversation with his students to unpack some of his own assumptions as well. Eventually, the conversation turned to the importance of engaging in safe but uncomfortable dialogue.

Do you know what you "sound like" to your students? In what ways have you engaged your students in conversations about race and identity in your classroom?

Helping Students Develop Their Cultural Identities

It is important for us as educators to help students feel comfortable with their cultural identities. Students should feel comfortable sharing and describing ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. Self-Awareness: Relationship Building in Diverse Classrooms
• Chapter 2. Designing and Leveraging and Effective Learning Environment
• Chapter 3. Reality Therapy in Diverse Classrooms
• Chapter 4. Non-Punitive Interventions in Diverse Classrooms
• Chapter 5. The Making of an Expert
• Chapter 6. Work Ethic in Diverse Classrooms
• Chapter 7. Characteristics of Successful Teachers in Diverse Classrooms
• Bibliography
• Related ASCD Resources
• About the Author
• Copyright