The New York Times Magazine published an article ostensibly about President Obama's mother, but with some insights useful to us who are interest in culturally appropriate education. The author attributes the President's demeanor to his years in Indonesia, where a low-key, unexcitable persona is considered appropriate. Prior to reading this, the wisdom to which I had been exposed was that because he was the first African American running for president, he had deliberately suppressed anything that might be considered "black rage" and therefore frighten certain segments of the voting public. The Indonesian connection makes more sense to me based upon my own experience as a teacher of culturally diverse students. Some cultures encourage eye contact and others do not. Some prefer competitiveness and others cooperation. Some parents encourage and others discourage children's participation in adult conversation. When a teacher is from one culture and the student from another, perceptions of untruthfulness (why won't you look me in the eye?) or ignorance (never raises a hand, does not participate in class discussions) and cheating (shared answers) can interfere with mutual understanding. How do we handle this as teachers and as students? My younger daughter has a learning disability. Once it was diagnosed and she became old enough for self advocacy, she would say to each new teacher, "I can take notes, or I can participate in class discussion, but my LD prevents me from doing both at the same time. What do you prefer I do in your class?" What would be a similar conversation that could take place between teacher and parent or student? How could a parent coach their child about appropriate classroom behavior?

Context is everything

Working with a student Monday on Business Math, the issue of contextual learning came up again. We were learning about disability insurance. The first part of the chapter was a review of arithmetic: multiplying by percentages, adding numbers with two decimal places, etc. No explanation, no context, just problems. The student is a nice, obedient kid, so he just muscled his way through (he had some problems with long division and multiplication of multi-digit numbers by each other). Finally, I asked him if he knew why we were asked to work these problems. He admitted that he had no idea.
I explained to him that benefits to be paid are often expressed as percentages of monthly or yearly income.
Then, we continued with the chapter, which explained the hows and whys and legalities of disability insurance and then finally that benefits to be paid are often expressed as percentages of monthly or yearly income. How hard would it have been for the textbook authors to put the explanation first and then given the problems? Knowing that the result needed to be in dollars and cents would certainly have helped him.

How I became interested

Mindful of Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan's teaching that Jews live in two civilizations, when I was ready to send my children to school, I looked for a Jewish school that would explain the majority culture, but in Jewish terms. "When you teach Chaucer," I would ask, "What do you tell the students about 'the holy blissful martyr?'" We chose our school accordingly, and I knew that my husband and I had succeeded based on two incidents.
1. When my older daughter was 5, my Catholic uncle died and I took her with me to Montreal for the funeral. The priest was very sensitive to the fact that all the mourners were Jewish, but the funeral did take place in a church. My yeshiva-educated daughter looked around the room and said, "I didn't know Catholics believed in avodah zarah (idol worship)." I explained to her that the statues of saints were there for worshipers to use as focuses for their devotions, and that they were representations of good people. "Ah," she said with some satisfaction, "Tzaddikim."
2. During Christmas week, many of our neighbors had creche scenes in their front yards. My younger daughter, about 3, came to me at a melave malka (Saturday night party to extend the sabbath) and announced in a rather loud voice to the gathered crowd that she knew the difference between Jews and Catholics. "We think G-d is single," she opined, "and they think He has a family."

Later, I realized that culturally appropriate education went beyond religion. Working in East New York with multiply handicapped children, I saw that many of the computer programs designed to teach them vocabulary were limited. My children would see and say "sofa" and the program would say "couch." They were being asked to distinguish between a duck and a goose, when what they really needed was to be able to distinguish between a policeman and someone in a doorman's uniform on his way home from work. My response was to begin writing my own software.

If I am teaching a concept (for example: rhyme, contrast, similarity, gravity) it is independent of content, which means that the more familiar the content, the more easily grasped the concept. Even when training adults to use databases, using "their" data makes the training go more smoothly.

I'm looking for your insights, from your experience as a teacher or a learner. Post examples of when getting on the same wavelength has helped you to convey or learn something new.