EDUC-230: Becoming a Culturally Competent Teacher

Schools have the potential to be spaces that affirm the value of diverse identities and lived experiences, promote collective action and inclusive communities, and to orient U.S. society toward (educational) equity. Achieving these goals requires culturally competent teachers who can both properly contextualize themselves and their students within the larger socio-political and structural landscape. To sharpen the cultural competencies of pre-service teachers, this course emphasizes the complexities and intersections of race, gender, sexuality, religion, ability, neurodiversity, class, and community. The course then explores the concepts of meritocracy and structural racism before providing a critique of other critical arenas where the opportunity gap is evident (e.g., housing, healthcare, transportation, and nutrition). Finally, the course provides a training in liberatory teaching practices (e.g., culturally relevant, responsive, and sustaining pedagogies, socio-emotional learning, and trauma-informed pedagogies) to assist pre-service teachers in facilitating the voices and resistance of marginalized students and local communities.