A Home Remedy for the Classroom

By Joanna Arellano

Abstract

As a teacher in the biggest public school system in the United States, I found myself struggling to incorporate culturally responsive and sustaining education (CR-SE) into my special education classroom practice. I was curious about how other special education teachers in the same city who had similar students were tailoring their lessons to include CR-SE. Were they also struggling to create effective lessons that students could engage in? Or was I the only one feeling alone and unsupported when it came to creating a CR-SE environment? I created a study whose participants were all graduates of the New York City Teaching Fellows certification program. I focused on finding answers to three main questions: How are other teachers applying CR-SE in their special education classrooms? Has it been effective? What evidence do they have to support their results? I found three common trends showing that teachers continue to need support when it comes to implementing culturally relevant pedagogy in the classroom: time, expectations, and accountability. Feeling this was not enough to help me, I continued to search for more answers. I eventually concluded that, in order for students to achieve their full academic potential, teachers first need to learn and practice how to construct and maintain empathy and inquiry in their classroom. These two ingredients together serve as the perfect “home remedy” to create a strong foundation for a CR-SE classroom for any beginner, intermediate, or veteran teacher.

Keywords: culturally responsive and sustaining education, CR-SE, special education classroom, empathy and inquiry, home remedy