Phone Monday through Friday 8:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m.
1-800-933-ASCD (2723)
Address 1703 North Beauregard St. Alexandria, VA 22311-1714
Complete Customer Service Details
December 2016/January 2017 | Volume 74 | Number 4 The Global-Ready Student Pages 66-69
Simon Rodberg
The message in this school is clear: Cultures are welcome and cultural differences are worth embracing.
Our public charter school in Washington, D.C., has "international" in its name and cultural competence in its mission statement. But it's not just the classes in Chinese, French, and Spanish or trips to embassies that prepare students to take on the world.
Instead, the journey to global readiness begins the first week of 6th grade—when students bring objects from home to share with classmates while sitting in a circle in their advisory class. This is their contribution to a cross-cultural garden. Students explain their objects to highlight an aspect of their culture and then place the artifacts in the middle of the circle. In this activity, originally suggested by Debra Rader and Linda Harris Sittig (2003), students' home cultures literally come to school.
Although the activity is about recognizing and appreciating differences, the most powerful effect doesn't come from students seeing their classmates' cultural objects. It comes in displaying and explaining their own. It's that ability—and requirement—to voice their own culture that really starts students toward global readiness.
DC International School is about 40 percent black, 40 percent Hispanic, and 20 percent white and Asian. More than half of our students receive free or reduced-price lunch. We currently serve more than 500 students in grades 6–9.
In the rhetoric of many urban school reformers, education is a way out. I would argue that the best way out for students is actually in—going inside to understand their culture and to understand themselves as cultured. There is precedent for this path. Advocates of culturally competent pedagogy for black students have long called for "the ability to link principles of learning with deep understanding of (and appreciation for) culture," which treats "students as subjects rather than objects" (Ladson-Billings, 2014). Students can't learn if they need to leave themselves behind.
Many other charter schools that educate students like ours are proudly assimilationist. They serve students by preparing them to enter a more rarified world. Students are expected to code-switch when they walk in the door, to identify themselves by a college-named homeroom rather than their actual home, to dress and walk and speak and act according to an Ivy League model of college prep-ness. But assimilation as a goal is both false and insufficient—false, because it presumes assimilation into an elite that has become less relevant in the 21st century, and insufficient, because we want our students to continue pushing cultural progress.
We, too, teach a college-prep curriculum, but we also want to prepare students for college diversity, even for college in another country if they choose. Beyond college, we want to prepare students for a world of many cultures—and to contribute to a world in which those cultures are preserved, valued, and built upon.
We start from a place of cultural positivity. We believe all cultures are interesting, worthwhile, and powerful. When a student's family is from El Salvador, we want that culture to be part of our school culture. When a student's family has lived in a poor neighborhood of D.C. for five generations, we want that culture, too. We want to see the crucifix, the black history flash cards, the book in Amharic, and the national soccer T-shirt. The message to students is this: You can bring your whole self to this school. You can bring who you are on this educational journey. You don't have to leave your family or culture behind.
We want our students of color to feel less of the divided self—the tension between home and school that has afflicted students asked to assimilate into a perceived "mainstream" society (Perry, Steele, & Hilliard, 2003). They are valued for who they are as well as for what they can become—and the buy-in from students and their families is enormous.
English language learners are not perceived as deficient at our school because everyone is a language learner. Given that language is a crucial part of both culture and global readiness, every student studies Chinese, French, or Spanish. We've also had students do independent studies on languages that their families speak, including Quechua, German, and Hebrew. As their interests become more international, our students simultaneously become more interested in their own backgrounds.
The message of cultural positivity is just as important, though in different ways, for students who are not from historically disadvantaged backgrounds. For white students, part of the message is that you, too, come from somewhere. Even if you're not from another country, there is a cultural specificity to you as well. Maybe it's the pickles your aunt makes. Maybe it's a baseball cap from your father's hometown.
We are teaching students—in fact, they are teaching one another and themselves—that everyone has a culture, and that these cultures can sit together in a circle, like one garden with many flowers. When they go out into the world, our students will need to appreciate the extraordinary range of cultures, and be both aware of and positive about the fact that they, too, bring their own.
Not every school has "international" in its name or a focus on language learning. But in a diverse society and with students heading for a fully globalized future, every school can—and should—be a culturally positive school. These tips can get you started:
All of these guidelines are about creating and highlighting moments when cultures meet. These moments should be positive, even though students' experiences in the "real world" might not always be that way. Schools should, of course, always be safe places to rehearse for adult life. We should create the kind of school culture that helps students from all cultures understand, appreciate, and look forward to the possibilities both within and beyond themselves. As they face their futures, students from all backgrounds ask themselves, What will happen to me—and all that I bring with me—when I encounter the world? It's the school's job to make that question feel exciting and rewarding, full of positive anticipation rather than worry or potential loss.
Culturally positive schools call on students and adults, from every cultural background, to step forward, not as representatives of a particular culture, but as their full selves. By doing so, we can create a path to global readiness and to making diverse, integrated schools work.
Ladson-Billings, G. (2014). Culturally relevant pedagogy 2.0: a.k.a. the remix. Harvard Educational Review, 84(1), 74–84.
Perry, T., Steele, C., & Hilliard III, A. (2003). Young, gifted, and black: Promoting high achievement among African-American students. Boston: Beacon Press.
Rader, D., & Harris Sittig, L. (2003). New kid in school: Using literature to help children in transition. New York: Teachers College Press.
Simon Rodberg is the founding principal of District of Columbia International School in Washington, D.C. Follow the school on Twitter.
Subscribe to ASCD Express, our free e-mail newsletter, to have practical, actionable strategies and information delivered to your e-mail inbox twice a month.
ASCD respects intellectual property rights and adheres to the laws governing them. Learn more about our permissions policy and submit your request online.