mendations to teachers included
holding students to high stan
dards and providing supports for
students to meet them, honoring
students’ cultural and linguistic
diversity, and building mutually
edifying relationships with stu
dents and families. Most notable,
Irizarry and his students share
this experience in The Latinization
of U.S. Schools (in press), a book
they wrote to inform the work of
educators and policymakers.
Developing a Responsive
School Culture
Changing a culture requires
changing more than just attitudes
and beliefs—it requires changing
behaviors. Schools can accom
plish this by focusing on the fol
lowing practices.
Targeted Professional
Development
People seldom believe in prac
tices they don’t know how to
implement. It follows that urging
teachers to have high expectations
for themselves and students, without
enhancing their expertise, is not
only inadequate but may be counter
productive (Ferguson, 2004).
Schoolbased professional learning
communities can improve teaching
and learning and lead to a funda
mental change in teachers’ work. To
enhance their learning, teachers can,
for example, shadow students during
the day and do collaborative inquiry
(Zemelman & Ross, 2009). By shad
owing students, teachers can learn
which content and activities most
motivate students as well as how and
with whom students prefer to learn.
As a result, teachers could investigate
what it would mean to create culturally
responsive learning environments for
particular students. Administrators
could support teacher collaborative
inquiry by providing needed resources,
such as books and other materials, time
before or after school, or simply moral
support for teachers’ work.
students of color will undermine
other students’ learning oppor
tunities. Yet such discussions are
essential to a race and ethnicity
responsive school culture.
Professional learning commu
nities can provide the structure,
shared respect, and trust needed
for collaboratively addressing
these issues. Although many
teachers and administrators
may be reluctant to focus on
the thorny issues of racism and
privilege, most students are eager
to begin the conversation. One
helpful resource for surfacing
these issues in the classroom is
Mica Pollock’s Everyday Anti-
racism (New Press, 2008), which
includes insightful essays by
more than 60 researchers who
each propose a single action that
educators can take to counteract
racism in schools and society.
These include such actions as
challenging cultural messages
about who can and cannot do
science and using photography to
wrestle with questions of racial identity.
© Stefanie felix
Surfacing Issues Related
to Race and Ethnicity
When schools examine data on student
achievement, they invariably look at
differences among racial groups—
although they may not look beyond
superficial categories of racial difference,
such as Asian American or Latino. But,
ironically, proposals for improvement
seldom suggest that student difficulties
could be related to race or ethnicity.
Nevertheless, instruction that is
unresponsive to such differences and to
ethnicityrelated tensions in schools and
classrooms may partially explain low
achievement.
Most schools are not characterized
by open discussions of issues related
to race and ethnicity. Educators may
believe that focusing on race and eth
nicity could be divisive and that strat
egies to enhance the achievement of
Witnessing Effective Practice
Seeing is believing. Teachers need
opportunities to witness diversity
responsive practices. By closely and
openly examining evidence on student
performance, schools can identify
teachers who are more effective than
others with students of diverse back
grounds. In some cases, teachers will
be more effective with students of one
race than with students of another.
School districts can identify people from
whom and places in which others can
learn, and they should provide time and
resources to do so.
Engaging with Families
The families of students of diverse
racial and ethnic backgrounds often
feel unwelcome and uncomfortable in
schools and can be reluctant to engage
in the kinds of activities that schools
