Hmm. I wonder how many letters it had before it became a four-letter word.
Please excuse my snideness. Perhaps we should recognize that perception as one of the many insights that come to teachers who are deeply engaged in the new fad of “culturally responsive teaching,” which is lovingly described in this cover story in NEA Today. (HatTip to The Colossus Of Rhodey.)
Among the other insights Wendy Miller, a white teacher at Seattle’s Meany Middle School, learned from her immersion in “culturally responsive teaching”:
“I don’t think you can move forward with effective culturally responsive teaching if you’re not uncomfortable,” Miller says. “It meant acknowledging that I don’t know everything about other cultures, and that we aren’t all the same. If you don’t have a staff that’s willing to go there, it won’t work.”
I guess I must prefer culturally unresponsive teaching, since I always liked teachers who were comfortable with what they were doing and taught that, despite apparent differences among students, basically we were all the same.
