Who's In My Classroom?. Tim Fredrick
for him to do schoolwork. I remember him asking me to help him read. I tried, but he got frustrated and said, “I don't get this sh-t.” Today, he's in a gang.
Still, he's one of the most caring people I know. I can count on him to listen and give me sound advice. When I've gone through bad breakups he's there to remind me of my worth and help me stay positive. I tell him that he should stop fighting and be focused in school. He has six younger siblings that he has to be a role model for. There are periods of time when he stays out of trouble, but eventually it seems to find him.
This friend is just one example of how being raised in the hood has made me more understanding and compassionate. Before I judge, I get to know a person because I know how it feels when people make assumptions about you based on where you live or your appearance. When I'm on the train I often feel that people are caught by surprise when they see me pull out a book by Shakespeare.
But other than showing respect, or just not making fools of ourselves, why is knowing students so important? Research within the fields of education and psychology shows that when we have knowledge of our students’ cultural backgrounds and knowledge of how they develop cognitively, physically, socially, emotionally, and linguistically, it makes us more effective teachers.1 The problem is that we often don't ask students the types of questions that help us to understand how they develop and what they need to feel supported.
Over the last five years, I've had the pleasure of conducting focus groups with children and adolescents from urban, suburban, and rural schools to better understand how they experience school. One of the most consistent findings of this work is that students often feel as though adults in their schools make decisions for them but without sufficient knowledge of them and without hearing from them. Many of the stories by teens in the Youth Communication writing program confirm these findings.
If you put yourself in their shoes, it's easy to understand how frustrating that could be. Imagine walking into your doctor's office. The doctor takes a quick look at you and then, before asking a single question about your symptoms or concerns, tells you what is wrong with you, prescribes medication and a lifestyle change, and says that if you didn't comply, you'll be in trouble. Even if they were right, I suspect that it would be the last time you visited that doctor.
Desmin Braxton, 17, looks back on that feeling of being judged and not listened to in his story “Labeled Troublesome”:
Walking through the front door of my middle school, it feels like someone's turned the temperature up. I start sweating as if I had a fever. It seems like everything just stops and all the attention is focused on me. Today feels like a trouble day.
My music teacher stands at the corner of the hallway, looking at me like I've got something on my face. As I walk through the hall I see kids playing, fighting, ripping posters off the wall, and just chillin’ in the hallway. The noise level is high.
I spot my math teacher. He does not look happy to see me. He stares at me rudely with his arms folded and his jaw clenched, like I've already done something wrong.
“Hello, Mr. Davis, how you today?”
He continues to stare, so I continue walking through the hall to the auditorium. Before I get there, my social studies teacher from last year stops me.
“Desmin.”
“What?”
“Where are you going?”
“To the auditorium, with my class.”
“Go there right now.”
I start getting mad. It's crazy how he stops me even though he knows where I'm headed, but he walks past the other kids and doesn't say anything. It's like I have on a bright red shirt that says, “Stop me.”
I admit I do things that get me in trouble at school. I like to talk in class, argue with the teacher and make people laugh. But I feel like the teachers and principals are always waiting for me to do something stupid so they can jump on my case. It's like we're in a war. The only question is who's going to strike first.
A lot of times it's me who makes the first strike. I do these little tests to see if a teacher is going to be respectful. If the teacher is cool, I'm not going to cross the line. But if he gets me mad, it's going to be a battle.
When I get a negative response from my teachers, I react with a rude comment, to let them know I do not like what they say. It makes me mad that they feel they can speak to me any way they want and try to make me afraid of them.
But the arguments with my teachers are cutting into my time for doing my work. It's making me fall behind in class so my grades are dropping. I end up focusing on the teacher and not learning the lesson. Then I'm stuck looking silly, without a clue on how to do the work.
Desmin wants to succeed. But he needs support that he's not getting. When I started working in schools, I was surprised by how many times I took part in meetings in which plans were made to “meet students’ needs” and to “support their learning” without ever involving students. We were essentially telling them what was wrong with them and prescribing a plan to “help” them without fully understanding their needs, what wasn't working for them, or how they felt we could best support them.
Why It's Crucial to Know Your Students
Having developmentally and culturally responsive teachers is important for all students, but it's particularly important for students from underrepresented groups and those who have been historically marginalized. These are the students that many of us are least likely to know well. However, DCRT is not simply about helping White teachers to teach Black and Brown children better. Through my work in schools, I've witnessed first-hand White teachers teaching White students in ways that were not culturally responsive. I've also observed Black and Latinx educators teach Black and Latinx students in ways that were not culturally responsive.
More importantly, I've witnessed teachers of different races and ethnicities teach children very different from themselves in ways that demonstrated knowledge and deep respect and curiosity about their students’ cultural backgrounds and showed that they believed they would succeed academically. For example, in the quote that begins this chapter, the teacher and student do not share a racial or ethnic background. Neha's teacher bridged whatever gap might have existed by showing genuine interest in Neha and her schoolwork.
So the focus of DCRT is to use our knowledge of who our students are, both developmentally and culturally, to shape classroom environments and schools that better support their needs. But it isn't that simple. What we believe about our students and what we actually know about them can be dramatically different. For example, I believed my East Harlem students wanted to escape from what I perceived as a war zone, but I didn't actually know that. It took a while—and many conversations with them—for me to acquire meaningful knowledge about their lives. I learned about their interest in going to college so that they could make a better life for themselves and their families. I also learned they worried about their families not being able to pay for college. Most importantly, I learned about the things that interested them and how school often felt disconnected from their lives.
As a parent, I remember having “conversations” with my teenage sons at the end of their middle school day that followed a frustrating pattern.
“How was your day?”
“Good.”
“What did you learn today in school?”
“Nothing.”
“You spent seven hours in school and you didn't learn anything?”
“Nothing that I was interested in.”
“Well, do you understand everything? Do you need help?”
“I'm fine.”