Culturally Responsive Teaching   |   Faculty Interest Group at Kingsborough

CULTURALLY RESPONSIVE TEACHING: LANGUAGE DIVERSITY IN THE CLASSROOM

 

Welcome

Kingsborough has a diverse student population and our work with Achieving the Dream has revealed a number of achievement gaps. Linguist Carlos de Cuba (Speech Communication) invites you to join us in exploring Culturally Responsive Teaching. This semester we will focus on language diversity, delving into issues that arise as a result of the many different varieties of English we and our students bring to the classroom. How we treat these differences can have profound effects on student engagement and success.

Some questions we will grapple with this semester include:

• What is the difference between a language and a dialect?
• Are some languages more logical than others?
• Do some students come to school with language deficits?
• Is dialect use appropriate in the classroom?
• Should I correct students grammar and pronunciation errors?
• Do some students experience bias because of the way they speak?
• How can we better facilitate academic success for students who don’t grow up speaking “standard” English?

This Spring we will continue reading Linguistic Justice: Black Language, Literacy, Identity, and Pedagogy (Baker-Bell 2020), focusing on activities promoting linguistic Justice that we can bring to the classroom, as well as familiarizing ourselves with grammatical and rhetorical features of Black Language.

Newcomers are always welcome! For more information or to join this group, please contact Carlos de Cuba at carlos.decuba@kbcc.cuny.edu.

         Group Facilitator

                                                                        

             Carlos de Cuba
         Speech Communication