Principles & Practices

Principle

Children benefit when teachers understand and incorporate cultural differences into language use within their daily routine.

Culturally responsive teaching practices in the preschool classroom create a positive learning environment. Culturally responsive practices incorporate the linguistic and cultural resources that children bring with them and thereby promote their learning and overall growth.

Practices

• Structure activities so that children can engage in telling stories or recounting events by expressing themselves through various means such as speech, pantomime, pointing, role-playing.
• Remember that children benefit from experiencing different types of interactions with adults and with peers, including cooperative and peer-oriented activities, as well as more independent activities.
• Inform family members, providers, teachers, and specialists about different types of language interaction practices that are used at school and by the families of the children in your class.
• Accept silence or quiet observation as a proper way for some children to participate, especially when they first join your class.
• Be aware that ways of expressing feelings, such as excitement, anger, happiness, frustration, and sadness, differ in various cultures. For example, a child may show excitement through shouting and jumping for joy, through a smile and coy look, through no outward signs while inwardly experiencing anticipation, or by sharing the fact they are excited with a friend or a trusted adult.
• Similarly, children from different cultural perspectives may interpret a single action by the teacher to have contrasting meanings. For example, a teacher may point to signal where she wants the children to go, but some children may think she is reprimanding them, singling them out for some reason, or saying she wants "one" of something (since she has one finger out).
• Vary "wait time," or the amount of time to you allow children to respond. Children from some cultural backgrounds find the pace of verbal interactions in U.S. schools very different from what they are accustomed to.
• Make sure your classroom environment reflects the children's cultures and languages in each learning center, on wall/window/bulletin board displays, and in educational and play materials.
• Visit the child's home and observe not only how parents interact with the child but also how other relatives and siblings talk to the child and how the child talks to or interacts with them.
• Go to community functions attended by parents and children and other community members, and observe the communication styles of the people attending these functions.