LM Sept.2017

Whitaker’s Dreamof Culturally Responsive Classrooms Driven by Plea of a Fourth Grader and Encouragement of a TeacherWho Cared

By Michael Chamness IASA Director of Communications

into two categories: economically disadvantaged students and/or children of color. She says developing cultural competency is a big key to bridging those achievement gaps. “That means not only seeing but acknowledging the cultural background and experiences of your students and also your principals and teachers,” she says. “If I know enough about students’ experiences and background, and if I use that knowledge in a way that demonstrates an appreciation of those experiences in the curriculum, it will help to engage students in learning.” Being of the same ethnicity alone is not a solution, Whitaker says, noting her own experience as a first-year African American woman teaching at an all-black school. “I assumed I would be a good teacher of black students because I was black. It didn’t happen,” she says. “Culture is the air you breathe; who you are is impacted by your childhood and adult experiences. The first competency I talk about is knowledge of self-culture. I don’t care what color you are, if you want to know if your child’s teacher is culturally responsive, sit in the back of the class and observe whether

Dr. Sonya Whitaker was in her first year as an elementary school principal when she was approached by a teacher requesting to send one of her fourth- graders to the office because he was kicking and screaming and disrupting the class. “Upon him making it to the school office I told him to have a seat, that his mom was on her way,” Whitaker recalls. “I noticed he got up and was talking to the secretary. I asked him to have a seat, please. Then he did it again.” At the end of the day, the secretary asked Whitaker if she wanted to know what the boy was saying. “The answer,” Whitaker says, “changed my life.” The answer to the question that the secretary posed to Whitaker is what she will reveal during the opening of her keynote presentation on Thursday afternoon (September 28) at the IASA 53rd Annual Conference. She will talk about the importance of having culturally responsive classrooms and how to achieve that goal. “I cannot get that boy’s question out of my mind. It’s why I have traveled the country speaking about it and why I wrote about it,” says Whitaker, who wrote a book by the title of “Is There Anyone That Can Teach Me How To Read?” Whitaker says that in studying the data used to

determine students’ competency levels in Illinois and across the country, students not making gains mostly fall

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