Culturally responsive lessons start with knowing our students and unpacking our assumptions.
Last fall, I worked with a 1st grade teacher who didn't understand why her students weren't excited or able to write about pumpkins. "They just can't do it," she said. "It's too hard."
As a consultant, I have heard these words time and time again from educators who are passionate about teaching but need guidance in their planning. This teacher was working on a differentiated lesson plan and was troubled by the number of students who could not write, describe, or speak about what she thought was a familiar object. When we dug deeper into her students' strengths and needs, she acknowledged that many were learning English as a second language and used to different customs, traditions, and seasons. There it was: Most of her students had never seen, tasted, smelled, or touched a pumpkin.
As an immigrant myself, I shared that I didn't learn about pumpkins until I was 15 years old and had pumpkin pie at a friend's Thanksgiving dinner. I thought the pie was dense and strange. Heck, it was one of the first pies I'd ever tried! For the first few years after arriving in the United States from Nicaragua, my family didn't celebrate Thanksgiving because it was an unfamiliar tradition. When we did eat Thanksgiving meals, we served rice, beans, and pork—traditional Latin foods for festive occasions.
These details surprised the teacher. But once she understood why her students did not have the background knowledge to engage with a pumpkin-themed lesson, her fixed mindset that students couldn't do it shifted to a growth mindset about how the lesson needed to change to meet students where they are.
We started by unpacking the standards addressed in the lesson and understanding the learning purpose. In the school's curriculum guide, the essential question to address was, "How do seasons change?" We refocused on learning writing skills anchored to the universal concept of change—one to which all students, including dual-language learners, could relate.
The teacher still wanted to use pumpkins in the lesson, but she would bring in a small pumpkin and cut it, giving students a chance to build background knowledge by feeling, smelling, and seeing it. The presentation would emphasize academic vocabulary development with opportunities to collaborate and practice orally, an activity that especially supports language acquisition for dual-language learners. Sentence frames would provide additional supports.
The problem with pumpkins is the assumptions that accompany these types of lessons—and the subtle but significant ways those assumptions shift our focus away from the standards and the true purpose of learning. When these kinds of narrow lessons were taught to me, I felt lost, confused, and like I did not belong. Learning in a second language is hard enough; we shouldn't further isolate students by making them feel out of place. Culturally responsive lessons start with knowing our students and unpacking our assumptions. Once we do, we can identify gaps in teaching and better affirm students' varied cultures, backgrounds, and identities.