TrillEDU: Culturally Responsive Pedagogy... | Jeffrey Dessources | TEDxNewJerseyCityUniversity

so culturally responsive teaching is a pedagogy that recognizes the importance of infusing the students cultural references in all of their learning right we see it on a k-12 level all the time we see teachers trying to make sure that their students are getting the key knowledge and adds their culture into it we've seen it also inside the classroom as well on a college level Brown University actually has a department focusing on culturally responsive teaching as an important aspect of student development one of my friends I don't know if you can tell by the beautiful face that I put on for you today I used some great moisturizer but I've been working in Student Development in higher education for about 12 years now and what I do recognize is as important and essential it is to be culturally responsive in the classroom it is even more so to make sure that we are representing our students as cultural influences and their representation outside of the classroom and what that means to me is that we have to have a conversation about student development and student leadership I'm just gonna give you a few items a few tidbits a few points that are gonna help us understand what we need to do to better recognize how to do so so the first thing I want to talk to you about is raising the level of your communication we have to have authentic conversations with our young folks and not just our young folks but anyone who considers themselves a student the conversations have to be not only authentic but they have to be raised at another level and for me when I think about communication the first thing that comes to mind is hip-hop I'm a hip-hop head grown up in that era and the thing that I remember is a great DJ if you've ever been to a party that had a terrible DJ you already know what happens the blending is not right the sound is a little bit off the DJs not on time see culturally responsive leadership because that's what we're gonna be talking about it's saying we can be the DJs in the leadership spaces that means we have to not blend the two sounds together or blend the two students together that doesn't mean that we have to make sure that the parties always turn up we have to make sure that our students are turning out into our spaces of cultural development every single day say I'm a hip hop head I told y'all this so another thing that I also love about hip hop and the original elements is graffiti art and what I love about graffiti art is that graffiti art is this representation of colors when everyone thought it was only supposed to be black and white now what does that have to do with cultural development and culturally responsive leadership I'll tell you we have to start diversifying our views our student leaders are not one color one gender one type of individual for us to be culturally responsive and responsible as leaders as educators as students you know we have to do we have to start getting our spray cans out and changing the colors reaching the spaces and the places that you never thought you could reach you have received graffiti art sometimes it's moving across trains sometimes it's on the top of high towers and you wonder how did they get those beautiful colors there see I told y'all I'm a hip-hop head and what I love about hip-hop also was breakdancing and see breakdancing was little thing in my house that we could not do cuz my mom she's a Haitian woman that said we are not going to be breakdancing anything in this house but they were the risk takers for you to be a culturally responsive educator you have to take a risk you cannot be this individual that is stuck in your standard ways thinking that I can just go in my merry way and be fine and dandy you have to take a risk you have to go to a place that you never thought you could reach you have to go to a left when they've always told you that right was the way to go see I told you I love hip-hop and this importance and its relationship to culturally responsive teaching and education and leadership I can't I can't say enough about the fact that I'm also an MC when I think about culturally responsive leadership in its effect and its impact on communication I always say see I was born in with crack was attacking blacks it rap on the map and quickly adapted to that and back to the back was cool in the city schools and not in tougher than TN I pity the fools too overzealous storytellers reciting a boss out of this world like spike when he was Mars was going far into Boston across color that Mike Tyson was still nice and it all about others it was a time when Buster was robbed Robin in here Jordan was scoring often versus Boston satisfaction the way to Jackson's acted Sam acted a crackhead but still made it happen my versatile flow is like dusty Michael in well so you know that I must be hot worst Pape the campus like I'm Basquiat and I'll tell me now you ready and not see that's authentic sixteen but I still got some bars left don't get a twist this yeah but we've got to be able to have authentic conversations see the MC was somebody I was able to go off the top of their head or tell a story because we need storytellers we need to make sure that the important messages that are happening right in front of our face are moving along in history we cannot be stuck in one space and that's why the communication levels have to go up see can I tell you another thing about culturally responsive leadership here's what I call trill edu we keepin it trill right when I talk about culturally responsive leadership we have to start thinking about how do we reshape our leadership curriculum model for social change in leadership and so forth and so on and the reason why I scoff a little bit about that because that model was introduced in 1993 and there's nothing wrong with being introduced in 1993 but you know who else was also around in 1993 Sears I'll tell you who else was the biggest and the baddest in 1993 Macy's Blockbuster Video the biggest and the baddest in 1993 and then all of a sudden something happened there was a reshape in the culture in those places just weren't quite ready and as educators we have to be ready we can't be those individuals that are stuck in the past that have not innovated right because innovation my friends it's oxygen for you to truly breathe to catch a breath you have to completely be involved and be in love with the idea of not only embracing the past with making sure that every step of the present and the future is paid attention to and evolving on a day to day see I'm from New York City and as a New Yorker things that are synonymous with my beautiful city are slices of pizza the Empire State Building rudeness that's not true that last part that's not true but you know what's also synonymous with New York City are yellow cabs and about seven or eight years ago a New York City yellow cab was worth 1.3 million dollars that means if you wanted to drive a yellow cab in New York you have to have 1.3 million dollars today my friends 7 years later it is worth 250 thousand dollars they got left they got left my father used to say listen if y'all are not downstairs by 8:15 a.m. y'all are getting left and I used to say no way we're getting left we'll be all right every morning we went down there my mother my sister and I and we said we'll be fine we go downstairs right and it would be all good until that one morning my mom took her time that day and we was it was about eight sixteen and I said mom we were about to get left I lived in the hood so you know the elevators were slow and it was always a super trying to ask us with the water still hot so we gotta go my dad's about to leave I got outside and that car was gone I first thought mouse that what kind of parenting is this I got to go to school in the morning but then my dad played a trick on us he pulled around the corner and said I told y'all at any time you can get left and I said whoa that showed me my friends then not only could I get left by that car but I can get left in any particular space that I occupy and so can you and that's why we must innovate that's why we must continue to change that's why we must continue to adapt to all the different things listen I hear you you may not be on snapchat or you may not be posting Instagram stories but if you consider yourself an educator you better understand what those terms even mean you better understand what the the new snapchat update means to your students you need to understand if your students are watching Netflix or not but beyond all of those things you need to understand the pain than the struggle that your students are going through when students are telling you listen my pronouns are him or he or her or they if you're not being culturally responsive you know what you're doing you're getting left you have to understand from all points of walk what does it mean to be leaders to be change agents right now the third thing that I always talk about if you don't mind me going to my notebook cause I'm gonna write I'm a poet so sometimes I like to keep my words coast to me and when I think about this last thing I want to talk to you about I talk about redefining the definition of what it means to be an educator see you're an educator there are people in this room that are my students they're my educators there are people in this room that are older than me they're my educators there are people in this room that I've never even met in my life and they are my educators you know what they are also my students I'm also a student to them we have to redefine the idea of what it means to be an educator if we truly want to be culturally responsive in our educational process everyone is an educator that's what I call we call it the trill edu way everyone is an educator but in the same regards everyone is also a student we're not in this space where we're going to live in these hierarchies where one person because they have X amount of degrees or X amount of experience is automatically the expert in every particular field there are people that are way more knowledgeable to me then me rather in science or the math fields or maybe even literature as well but there's spaces that we can all learn together and that's what culturally responsive education and leadership is today we always fight to figure out where can we find leaders so often I have college students come to me and they say Jeff I know what to do after I graduate Jeff I can't find a job in my major Jeff I'm struggling to recognize what happens next and I say you know what we didn't do a good enough job being culturally responsive to you we did not prepare you for the innovations that are happening outside of your space and that's what we have to do if we want to change education in my friend that's what I'm here to do this is not me having a conversation with you this is me announcing the movement to reshape and change the idea of education this is not just me announcing this movement but I always go to my notebook because it has influences to me and I go to this quote by one of my favorite people in history you might have heard of her she goes by the name of Harriet Tubman and what Harriet Tubman once said was I grew up a neglected weed ignorant of liberty having no experience of and I grew up a neglected we've so many of our students right now are being neglected by educators who are not prepared to be culturally responsive we have so many students that are ignorant of leadership because our educators are choosing not to be culturally responsive but you know what I love about that quote is that although she was a neglected weed although she was ignorant of Liberty somehow someway she made multiple trips over five to nine trips back and forth to identify something she didn't even know existed imagine that imagine finding leadership finding something that you didn't even know existed you had no line set of this thing in the future but Harriet Tubman told you we're gonna find freedom so what we're gonna do today is make this commitment to find leadership freedom to find the existence that is going to push us to a space of cultural responsibility and responsiveness this is where we announced the movement this was day one and there's many more days to come so let's band together let's find what education truly means let's be culturally responsive let's innovate and find our oxygen thank you very much [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 98,165

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Education, Culture, Development, Higher education, Leadership, Students

Id: 4KrxfcW7Irg

Length: 13min 37sec (817 seconds)

Published: Tue May 08 2018