Culturally Relevant

It is important for teacher to be culturally relevant. Because schools today are diverse, it is important for educators to focus on the purpose of schools—education. However “changed” society seems to be today, it sadly has not improved much. Curriculums can still be biased, as can be teachers. This disrupts the purpose of education (making it irrelevant to the students) and becomes about getting schooled versus being educated. Although in today’s public schools all the testing makes it seem impossible to teach anything more than the curriculum given, there should be a way to help make the message more relevant to children (therefore more valid). This cultural relevance is about differences in general—seeing diversity as a unique thing and not a thing to shape into something else. It is about teaching children to appreciate themselves as individuals versus teaching them to conform to society. In an effort to do this, teachers must get to know their students. They need to understand what the children are like and get a feel for the communities in which they live. It is never enough to just convey the curriculum. Instead, emphasis should be placed upon making it relevant to the students. Without this difference, teaching is simply narration.