I'm a teacher in a school with both day and boarding students.
My boarding students come from all over the world: China, Korea, Africa, Ukraine, Jamaica, Brazil,
etc. And even some of my day students come from other countries. I teach math, which many people
say is the universal language. So while many of my students may not know the English language well at
the beginning of the school year, they generally understand how to plug numbers into, for example,
the quadratic formula during my class. And so for the last 29 years I taught all of my students
as if they'd all come from similar backgrounds. I guess you could say I ignored their culture
in an attempt to teach all as one big melting pot with math being the universal language. Sure,
I added some things to my teaching repertoire to help students assimilate, like writing what I was
saying on the board after an international student told me that I was speaking too fast for him to
come up. But it was rare for me to ask my students much about their culture. I didn't want to
single anyone out, and truthfully I was afraid of embarrassing anyone. So I waited for them to tell
me about their customs or upcoming holidays and many did not. I didn't realize I was doing this
all wrong until last year when I took a doctoral class called "Effective Relational and Cultural
Factors and Processes of Learning" and I learned that the way that I taught students as if they
all came from the same background could actually hinder their performance in class.
I discovered that the traditional purpose of schooling in America has been to assimilate
those from other backgrounds by asking them to give up their languages and cultures to succeed
and that's exactly what I did. But as I learned in my class, and will explain to you, this leads
to cultural discontinuity or inconsistency between how students learn at home and school.
Imagine a student walking into your class and nothing seems to fit with what they've known
their entire lives. What if the way they learn in their homes or their previous learning environment
does not correlate at all to how you teach in the classroom? And what if, because of this, they
don't feel welcomed or seen in your classroom and then choose not to put forth the effort to learn?
And maybe because of this we think that they cannot learn and so we, their teachers,
lower our expectations of them. The good news is that there is a way to ease this transition,
and it's called culturally sustaining pedagogy or CSP. CSP is the theory that a teacher must close
the gap of cultural discontinuity to preserve student backgrounds and embrace diversity,
making students feel comfortable, relaxed and therefore more willing to
learn. According to Django Paris, an author and professor of multicultural education,
this theory CSP challenges the previous narrative that differences in students and their families
must be assimilated. So a first step to helping all students preserve their backgrounds and
feel comfortable learning is to warmly invite the cultures and diverse backgrounds that our
students show up with to school every day while still holding high expectations for all students.
But there's also a second theory that I learned about that helps to motivate students
intrinsically. Think for a moment about something you chose to learn outside of an academic setting.
Maybe you took a class at the gym that you enjoyed because the instructor has the same
background as you, so that you can relate to them more. Or you chose to take an art class because
you believe that you're good at it. Or you took a cooking class with friends because you want to
learn how to cook but you also enjoy the social aspect of connecting with others while you learn.
Research shows that we learn best when our basic psychological needs of autonomy, relatedness,
and competency are met. Psychologists Ryan and Deci call this self-determination theory or
SDT, and it emphasizes how social and biological conditions can make learning more personal and
rewarding. Likewise, a lack of these conditions can prevent students from accomplishing tasks.
If students feel that they are in a controlled setting, their feelings of self-confidence may
just shut off. If they don't think they relate to their peers or teachers, they may just give up
entirely. So how can we as teachers change formal learning in school so that students are both
intrinsically motivated to learn to do their best while feeling valued for exactly who they are?
I believe it is by incorporating projects at the intersection of the culturally sustaining
pedagogy and self-determination theory. Teachers can make math and other subjects more meaningful
for students by curating projects that offer both student choice and relevance, and showcase who
they are. The method is simple but not necessarily easy. It requires time to sit and think about all
the concepts in a unit and consider how to make it both culturally responsive and open
for students to self-select the topic that they are interested in. I recommend that you generate
ideas with colleagues. Here's the roadmap that I use. First, I made a list of all topics that
i was teaching in a particular unit. For example, when I was teaching the first unit in Geometry,
students were learning about the distance and midpoint formulas and how to use a protractor.
Then I thought about how these topics might relate to a student's culture, background,
or experiences. So I took a world map and laid it out on a graphing website called Desmos.
I made one coordinate "A" where our school in Florida is, and I had students choose a
location outside of the United States where their family is from and had them call this Point B.
The idea is that they would use the distance formula to find the distance between where
they are now and where their family is from, while simultaneously sharing their background with me.
Now, it could be that the student is already from outside the United States and so easily
they could find "B" but for some students they had to do a little bit of research to find
where their families came from. Here's a slide from a student's project and they were talking
about how they were from England. My colleague and I knew that we would eventually teach triangles,
so we wanted a third point. She came up with giving students a choice for the third point.
Where would you like to travel to and why? So, at this point, we were learning about students'
backgrounds while giving them the autonomy to choose a travel destination. Next, we came up
with a series of tasks that they were learning and thought about how to relate them to real life.
We had students find all three distances using the distance formula and find midpoints discussing how
planes sometimes need to stop midway to fuel up. We knew that ratios were going to be a
topic coming up in the course so we had students convert the map distance to the actual distance
and then had them look up the true flight distance and compare their results. We found that students
were excited to see how close their answers were to the actual distances and if they were far off
they cared about why that was and they tried to find their mistakes. We continued by asking
other questions about what they were learning such as what type of triangle did they find,
what did the angles measure up to, and why?
Now projects do not need to be created from scratch.
A quick Google search with the unit topic
plus the project may yield many results. For example there's a project we've been using at our
school for years called The City Project. Geometry students create a city with their knowledge of
parallel lines and their properties. This year, I added a twist. You are to design your own city
where you celebrate some aspect of your life. Whatever you want it to be. Sports, background,
favorite hobby, animals, books, family, you get the idea. This one student loves to travel,
so she based her project on that. Another did a Yankees theme, and he wrote "I did the Yankees
theme for many reasons. One reason is that I love the team and I'm very knowledgeable about them.
Also I've gone to many games with my family all around the country and this has caused me to
have created strong bonds with my family." This is something I never would have known.
When I asked other students what they thought about this project, here's how some of them
responded. "I really enjoyed the creativity that was incorporated into this project.
Having to come up with many ideas and designs was very interesting and different from any math class
I've ever been in. This project celebrated a huge part of my life because I could embrace terms,
ideals, and movements in a sport I love and play every day." "I enjoyed revisiting past
memories when I designed my own city based on my favorite book." A few kids wrote that.
"I really liked the city project. It was fun to be creative. Being able to completely design the city
however I wanted was exciting." Another example of how I incorporated these projects was when I
taught both parent functions and conic sections in my Algebra II honors classes. Students had to plan
a unique drawing on the website Desmos using at least one ellipse, circle, parabola, hyperbola,
and one other parent function as a minimum while choosing any topic to draw of their choice. They
also used what they knew about domain restrictions and transformations of functions, and the results
were stunning. Some students even animated their drawings or added different colors by programming,
which they looked up how to do on their own. Here are some of their results. I didn't even know that
this one student was an ice skater or that this student was a soccer player until this project.
This one student is a baker and another is a proud Canadian. And here's just a student
who just chose something she enjoys every day: a cup of Starbucks coffee and a muffin.
When I asked students what they thought of having the choice and control over
their learning in this project, here's what some of them replied:
"Being able to create anything I wanted is so cool because I get an overall better understanding in
Desmos. Not only that, but I also learned about things that weren't taught in class."
"I felt that having the choice made the project more interesting and fun. We were able to choose
what we wanted that aligned with our interest. It engaged me more." "This control took away
the pressure of learning new material within a short period of time and it was very fun
to see how the material fits into things I like, like guitar." "It was nice to share my
passions with the teacher in a way that's still related to math." When I asked how it related
to their feelings of competency, here's how some responded: "I had fun making my project and felt
more comfortable with parent functions as I completed it, so I learned indirectly."
"The project made me feel better at math because it amazes me that I created this huge picture
with all these equations. Scrolling through all my equations really boosted my confidence in math
especially when I showed my friends and they were impressed and told me how hard the project looked.
It helped me understand the material better because most of the time I learn things better
when I enjoy the material and the project gave me an opportunity to play around with
the numbers and see the various results." When do we have time to do that in class?
Several students also mentioned that although first they were completing the project for a
grade they became motivated to work longer and harder on it because they were enjoying what they
were creating. A student wrote, "When creating this project I did not consider the grade at all.
It actually became a joke with my family how much I worked on my math project. Whenever my
family reminded me how much I worked on it, I always said I did it because it was super fun.
Never did I feel forced to do this project or have any time constraints because in reality I
was really enjoying it." Another said, "The second we got the project, I was very eager to start.
Despite it not being due for a while, I couldn't help but start working on it. I would add small
details while in class, in advisory, or just sitting at home. Another wrote, "Once I noticed
that my project had all of the requirements to receive all the points, because I chose to create
something related to my passion, I continued to make it the best possible drawing that I could."
I got some feedback that students wanted to see what other students did. I didn't have time in
class for all students to present their projects, so I used the website Padlet to incorporate
the later student projects, and then I shared it on Google Classroom and then they could see what
everyone else did. And they really enjoyed this. So here's what it looks like on Padlet. It's a
website and all you do is you just click on each one and it brings you directly to the project.
Self-Determination Theory motivates students intrinsically and Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy
invites them to share their cultural backgrounds and be seen and welcomed. Combined, they can help
students feel more connected to you and each other while learning. Without them, students
can be unmotivated and feel left out, resulting in poor academic performance, classroom behavior, and
low self-esteem. But if we incorporate projects or even just questions in our classroom that puts
students in control of their learning, while getting to know them culturally, we can support
them and make them feel like they belong in a comfortable and loving environment. Thank you.