Racially Just Schools
Racially Just Schools
How To Plan For Equity-Focused Instruction: 5 Questions To Ask
Please share your questions and/or reactions to this episode with Dr. Green.
What if the traditional methods of teaching are inherently flawed and perpetuating inequality in our education system?
In this episode #47, join Dr. Terrance L. Green, as he discusses the transformative Equity-Responsive Instruction Framework, which is designed to create racially just classrooms. You’ll learn why the outdated banking model of education fails to consider students' unique lived experiences.
Moving from theory to practice, Dr. Green dives into actionable strategies for planning to enact equity-responsive instruction. He explores five essential questions that educators can use to ensure their lessons are inclusive and reflective of their students' cultural, racial, and community backgrounds. Learn how to make your classroom universally accessible, promote higher-order thinking, and share power with students by co-creating learning goals and norms.
This insightful episode provides questions to help educators foster dynamic, equitable learning environments that affirm and engage all students in meaningful ways. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to advance your teaching practice and support every learner’s journey.
Grab my FREE e-book "3 Essential Questions Every Equity Team Must Ask: Equity Audits That Make Real Change." Get your copy HERE.
I hope you enjoy this episode and join our community at: www.raciallyjustschools.com. When you join the community, I will send you a FREE video on 3 Tips to Make Your Racial Justice Work Better.
Before we jump into today's episode, I have some exciting news to share with you. One of the questions I get asked all the time is do you have any tips to help our team while we're conducting our equity audits? Well, now I do Get my brand new ebook Three Essential Questions. Every Equity Team Must Ask to conduct equity audits that make real change. It's your team's blueprint for action Plus. The book comes with a cheat sheet guide at the end that can help your team. Use it to support your work, as I've been sharing it with folks they've asked well, is it $14.99 or is it $9.99? And you know what I'm making? It absolutely free, that's right. I just want to get this information into the hands of the people who need it for absolutely free. To get your free copy, all you need to do is to go to equityauditscom forward slash ebook that's equityaudits with an S dot com forward slash ebook. Enter your name and your best email address and I'll send it to you right away. So grab your free copy.
Dr. Terrance L. Green:Now All right on to today's episode. Have you ever wondered about a simple yet effective teaching framework that you could use in any teaching and learning context? If you've answered yes, then you are in the right place. Hi, I'm Dr Terrence L Green. I'm a tenure professor and I've helped to prepare hundreds of racially just and anti-racist school leaders, and I want to help you. That's why I created this podcast to provide you and your team with real-world insights and practices that work so that you can collectively build racially just schools. On today's podcast, I'm going to share with you four problems with traditional teaching methods and why they typically don't work in classrooms for young people and even for adults. Then I'm going to talk to you about some more innovative approach to teaching and what we can glean and learn from them. And finally, I'll be sharing with you some steps to a teaching process that I call equity responsive instruction and how you can start practicing it.
Dr. Terrance L. Green:Today, in this episode, as we talk about equity responsive instruction, I want to specifically talk about planning for equity responsive instruction. Now, in subsequent episodes, I'll unpack all of the elements of equity responsive instruction and what it looks like, how it might unfold in a classroom, what if you're observing it, what to look for, but right now, I want to start at the planning phase, right? So I want you to think about a lesson, a unit that you want to plan, and I want you to be thinking about yourself, or with your team or with your instructional coach, how you might start to plan for equity responsive instruction. I'm going to share some questions that can help guide that planning. Before we get into today's episode, I want to remind you that this podcast is brought to you by wwwraciallyjustschoolscom, and when you join our community today, I will send you a free video on how to make your racial justice work better. I'm excited about you joining the community and I look forward to meeting you, and if you're ready to get into today's episode, we will in one second.
Dr. Terrance L. Green:But first I have a special announcer that's going to get us started. Welcome to the Racial Justice School Podcast with your host, dr Chad Saldar. He's my daddy and he's the best ever. Let's go. You're listening to the Racially Just Schools Podcast, the show that provides resources to help you and your team build racially just schools. Now here's your host, dr Terrence L Green. Welcome to the Racially Just Schools podcast. My name is Terrence L Green and I am your host and yo. I am excited that you are here with me on today.
Dr. Terrance L. Green:Now, on today's episode, I'm going to be talking about a concept that I developed around 2017, 2018. It's been many years since I developed it it was even before the pandemic and so I was writing a book possibly on it and a book proposal to end up writing it, but I got several chapters on this idea that I started writing about many years ago, called equity responsive instruction. Equity responsive instruction, and this is something today that I'm going to share with you about how you can start practicing equity responsive instruction right now. In whatever capacity you're teaching in whether it's at a K-12 classroom level or PK-12, whether it is a university classroom, whatever context you find yourself in, whether you're teaching other principals or other administrators you can apply equity responsive instruction to advance your racial justice and equity work. So let's jump right in.
Dr. Terrance L. Green:As we think about equity responsive instruction, it's important to first understand and differentiate it from still, unfortunately, some common ways and popular ways that instruction typically unfolds in schools, even though it's ineffective and even though it's deeply problematic. And I want to talk to you about what Paulo Freire called, in his famous book the Pedagogy of the Oppressed, the idea of banking, and for the sake of this episode, I'll call it banking instruction. Now, banking instruction functions off of this premise. The premise is this whether you know, folks engage in it implicitly or explicitly, to be filled with knowledge from teachers. And the reality is, the more that students are filled with knowledge, the more they are considered great students. And the more that teachers fill students with knowledge, the more they're considered great teachers. And so Freddie has this amazing quote in there. He says that education thus has become an act of depositing right. But now here's the thing Banking instruction is one ineffective, two isn't equitable, but three is highly problematic for a number of reasons, and I want to share with you four problems with banking education and why it is so ineffective.
Dr. Terrance L. Green:The first one is this that banking instruction, it is the information, the content, the facts, the knowledge that is shared with young people. It is often detached from their lived experiences and their realities. So the content, the things that is shared with young people, it is often detached from their lived experiences and their realities. So the content, the things that they're learning, you know, it seems like why in the world am I learning this? What does this have to do with my life? What does this have to do with reality? When would I ever use this? But banking information is like you know what we don't, we're less concerned about your lived experiences and your reality. This is content that I just have to make sure I'm transferring to you.
Dr. Terrance L. Green:The second thing an issue with banking instruction is that it doesn't require any forms of higher order or more, I should probably say more specifically, critical thinking, because students are typically recording, they're memorizing, they're repeating facts, they are learning content without any significant meaning or context. But I'm just memorizing, I'm repeating significant facts, things of that nature, but there's no significant context for how all this stuff is unfolding. It prohibits students from developing any type of critical consciousness where they begin to question the world and question their role in transforming the world and transforming their community, come into classrooms with an assortment of knowledge and knowledges, an assortment of skills, abilities and gifts that can be foundational and resources for learning. So in baking instruction, it doesn't register that young people come into classrooms with a depth of knowledge and knowledges, that they come into classrooms with amazing abilities and skills and lived experiences, which can be a resource for learning and a foundation for learning. And so these are four reasons why banking instruction is deeply problematic.
Dr. Terrance L. Green:Okay, now I want to start to talk to you about equity-responsive instruction, and a great place to start is to just talk to you about how I come to understand what it is as we start to unpack equity-responsive instruction. To make it as simple as possible, I think of equity responsive instruction as a teaching framework and that teaching framework seeks to address four particular aspects in people's teaching. One is their instructional practices. Two is their ideological and their perspectives that they're bringing and they're functioning and operating with in the classroom. Number three is classroom culture and community. And number four, classroom structure. So when I think of equitable responsive instruction, I'm thinking about the actual instructional practices, the ideological and the perspectives that one brings into the teaching environment and experience, the culture in the community that's engendered and that's produced and reproduced and created within that context, and then the culture in the community that's engendered and that's produced and reproduced and created within that context, and then the structure of the classroom, like who's in the classroom, you know, like how is it? Folks would? That would be Mark what's identified as having, like similar abilities, varying abilities and things of that nature.
Dr. Terrance L. Green:But a few caveats I want to give you as we talk about equity responsive instruction. So the first thing is I want to address is like my use of the word responsiveness, and so when you hear the term responsiveness, you might automatically think respond, which can denote type of action that happens after something has already occurred. So it can conjure up the idea that equity responsive instruction is reactionary. And so well, it's not reactionary. I like to say it can be reactionary if instruction has unfolded in a way that wasn't the most impactful or generative, but it is also what I like to call pre-actionary, so let me explain. So, one of the things that I draw on as I think about this idea from the research is an amazing article from Muhammad Khalifa, mark Gooden and James Davis that they wrote in 2016 about culturally responsive school leadership, and one of the things that they write in there is that responsiveness is the ability to create school context and curriculum that responds effectively to the educational, social, political and cultural needs of students curriculum that responds effectively to the educational, social, political and cultural needs of students.
Dr. Terrance L. Green:So the two essential words here that I want you to hold on to as we think about equity responsive instruction is that number one. On one side, it creates and on the other side, it responds, so it is far more than just being something that is reactionary. It likes to pre-act, if you will. It pre-acts or proactively aims to create, to anticipate and to seek to address inequities in the classroom across the four levels that I mentioned previously. The second thing is that you just need to hold this caveat is that equity responsive instruction, like any instruction, any work around equity, is messy, it is rife with tensions and sometimes it has contradictions. And so, as I think about this as a teaching framework, it is a flexible framework. It's not inflexible, that has to be followed like step by step by step and is a linear process. No, it's a scaffolded framework that can be molded and operationalized in different ways based on the contextual, specific realities that someone finds themselves in.
Dr. Terrance L. Green:When we talk about equity responsive instruction, I want to specifically talk about planning for equity responsive instruction. Now, you know, at the core, you know, equity responsive planning. It means that you are intentionally, you're proactively designing lessons and units with an intentional focus to make sure that you are meeting the needs, but also building on the gifts and the resources and the talents of each and every student, which takes time to do this, particularly in a way, as you're thinking about differentiating, as you're thinking about the varying experiences that young people have had as they show up in the class. So it is about, you know, going beyond just delivering content in an actively, in an engaging way, but you want to make sure that you are showing up in the class in ways that are intellectually stimulating, that it honors the identities, the lived experiences and the unique perspectives that young people and that students bring into classrooms. And so this is going to be very important as we start thinking about dismantling systemic inequities, as we think about how we're planning for what unfolds and what happens in our classrooms and creating learning spaces where literally every single person who was there they feel like this is a place that they can thrive, and we start to create the conditions under which and within where they can begin to thrive.
Dr. Terrance L. Green:Ok, now I want to share with you the questions that you can use in your planning as you're getting ready to use equity responsive instruction, and there are five questions that I want to share with you. Okay, let's jump right in. Here's the first question what are some ways that I or that we, if you're working on a team, can teach this overall unit and or today's lesson to ensure that it is culturally and community responsive to the students and families that are in my classroom? I would say it again what are some ways that I, that we, if you're working on a team, can teach this overall unit and or today's lesson right to ensure that it is community and or culturally responsive to the students and the families that are in my classroom? So in this question, I want you to be thinking about the students that are in your classroom, be thinking about their backgrounds, be thinking about their racialized identities, be thinking about their cultures, their communities, and how can your lesson plan, your unit plan, reflect those realities in ways that are strength-based, in ways that build on the assets and the gifts that they represent in their community?
Dr. Terrance L. Green:So, are there ways to include and incorporate particular types of literature and the particular types of authors of those literature? Are there examples? Are there case studies? Are there things that reflect and mirror your students' cultural backgrounds, their racialized identities? Are there stories? Are there history, particular history from their community that can be used as a teaching tool? Are there arts that can be used?
Dr. Terrance L. Green:All right, you know this approach is, you know, to aim to make the learning more about who they are and to affirm their identities and showing them that their experiences and the knowledge that they have, that it matters and that it is a resource and it is a foundation for the learning. And, additionally, you should consider inviting community members into your classroom, whether you know folks, if it's something that's math-based people who do math types of work, whether it's something that's environmental or scientific people do scientific work, whether it's something that deals with the literature or arts, like thinking about the people in the community that you might invite into your classroom, whether that is physically or virtually, to share their knowledge and experiences. Right, this, I think, can help to enrich the learning environment and it builds an important bridge between the school and the community. And you could be thinking about what you're grappling and wrestling with in the content in your particular classroom. Are there people in the community who are grappling with similar issues, whether, again, it's historical, whether it's mathematical, whether it's something that has to do where English language arts can be used as a tool to help them address what they're addressing in the community? So by making these connections, you begin to affirm and devalue students' identities and encouraging them to bring their whole selves into the classroom, but also to make connections between what's happening in the classroom and what's happening in their community context and their lived experiences.
Dr. Terrance L. Green:The second question is how might I structure this lesson or this unit so that it is universally designed to be accessible for each student in my classroom? Where they can, they're required to engage in higher order thinking and critical thinking and knowledge construction, and so we want to make sure that, regardless of how students learn, regardless of their learning experiences, we want to make sure that they can fully participate, be engaged and be an active creator and benefit from the lesson that they're a part of. Again, we're talking about education not being done to you, but something being done with you. There's agency, there's an agentic portion to that. This means using a variety of teaching strategies and the way you engage with young people, opportunities for hands-on learning. I use Lego bricks often, I use Play-Doh. So, thinking about, you know, are there opportunities for hands-on learning where people can, you know, show their learning through what they create? And we could talk more about how this might play out across all different types of content areas.
Dr. Terrance L. Green:So it's not just only about you know having high expectations and you know setting the bar high, but it's making sure that all students are engaged in critical thinking and problem solving and constructing their own knowledge as they're learning in your classroom. So you know you can differentiate tasks in a number of ways. You can create a lot of opportunities for students to show what they know and to make their understanding known, come through projects, through presentations, through discussions, through written reflections. You can use all types of scaffolding techniques to support students so that you gradually can increase the complexity and the challenge that you bring to them. But this all unfolds people and happens in planning. You can plan for this and just because you plan for it doesn't mean it won't go awry. But you're thinking about this proactively, how this might look right. So it means providing the right supports to ensure that all of your students can thrive within their context, the right supports to ensure that all of your students can thrive within their context.
Dr. Terrance L. Green:The third question is this how am I teaching this lesson and or this unit in ways that will share power with students? How might I create opportunities in this lesson to learn from students and to make them and position them as teachers? I'll say it again the third question is how am I teaching this lesson in ways that will share power with students not have power over students, but power with students and how might I create opportunities in this lesson to learn from and with my students and to position them as teachers. So traditional teaching, as I said earlier in this episode, it positions the teachers you know oftentimes as the sole possessor and holder of information and knowledge. And so when you share power with students, the goal is you're working to design lessons and units to create more dynamic and equitable learning environments. So you might consider how you might co-construct and co-create aspects of the learning For sure, co-create and co-construct the norms of the class, but you also might think about co-constructing and co-creating the learning goals with your students. This allows them to now become teachers and facilitators and creators and they actually get to design part of what they're learning. And again, you want to make sure all this stuff, of course, is aligned to the standards, because I know you're teaching in a particular context and so I want to make sure that you are teaching and doing what you're supposed to do. But there are opportunities what I'm saying even where you are to think about how you might plan for equity, responsive instruction in the work that you do. So then this as you're thinking about this question, you're thinking about how do you flip the dynamic to make sure that student is teacher and teacher is student, in that there is a dynamic nature between those two, and so students can lead small groups, they can share their expertise. This again, we're trying to position them to understand their power and their contributions. And so sharing power recognizes that learning is a multiple way street, that you learn with and from your students in the same ways that they learn with and from you. It might unfold differently, but we're trying to set up that dynamic, but we're planning for it even before we enter into the classroom.
Dr. Terrance L. Green:Question four is this why and how do I ensure that the ends of this unit and or lesson addresses academic, cultural, racial and or inequitable power dynamics? To what ends have I created a classroom environment where every student feels a sense of deep belonging, thriving and as part of a community? I'll say it again why and how do I ensure that the ends of this unit in today's lesson, this unit in our lesson, addresses academic, cultural, racial and equitable power dynamics? To what ends might I create a classroom environment where every student feels this deep sense of this is where they should be, this deep sense of thriving as part of this community? So this question is really asking you, and if you're planning, with somebody on your team to think very deeply about. You know how you are showing up, but also the space that's created for the ways that your students show up, and so we're thinking about the multiple perspectives and viewpoints that can live in the classroom.
Dr. Terrance L. Green:Classroom is creating a sense of radical belonging, this folks of color who are black authors or indigenous authors or Pacific Islander authors or whomever. You're centering the voices of the people that are in your class. You're using instructional strategies that amplify their perspectives. You're creating opportunities to engage in conversations. Now, you know, depending on where you are, this might have to unfold a little bit differently depending on the district that you're in, but you're thinking about proactively. Are there opportunities to have discussions around issues of power? Are there opportunities to have questions around issues of equity and to encourage them to think critically around the world about issues that are happening around the world and in their local context? Around the world, about issues that are happening around the world and in their local context? And so, even if you can't speak directly about particular issues, because there is a racial backlash that is continuing to unfold in regards to any work that's related to racial justice or equity, but can you create the conditions for young people to at least question right. And so, even if you have to use something that is traditional in terms of the curriculum or the text, there are some things through questioning that could be powerful tools to develop a consciousness in young people, to develop a world that is racially just and equitable.
Dr. Terrance L. Green:Now, again, you need to take all of this I'm asking you within the context of the district that you're working in, and you have to be strategic. You know we did a while back, uh, did a episode, check it out, definitely on um being, you know, strategic in, in, in how you move, and so I think these are things you all want to consider, but these are things that will come up in planning and you're like I need some time to plan, so you need to go to your administrator, go somebody in the district, like we've got to figure out a way to plan, and I need to do an episode on equity in scheduling, right, because schedules are always messy and they're always all over the place, but one of the main ideas is that you schedule what you prioritize the most, right, so that's the fourth one. The last question is this how and in what ways can I link this lesson to state standards, make it relevant to students' lived experiences and do it all in ways that build on their gifts, their assets and their strengths to develop a critical consciousness. So this is again if you're working and teaching in a system and I mentioned this before, but I'm being very explicit how and in what ways can I link this lesson to state standards, make it relevant to students' lived experiences and do it in ways that builds on their assets and develops a sense of critical consciousness? So you know, the reality is that many educators feel pressured. They're here to like strictly given standards and guidelines, and so, but meeting those standards and making your content relevant aren't mutually exclusive. So right, so I want you to.
Dr. Terrance L. Green:In this question, we're thinking about how you can bring the state standards to life by connecting them to the lived experiences of the young people and the students that you support. So, again, this goes back to what we mentioned a little bit earlier, but using these real world issues that resonate with your students in communities and in their lives as a basis for exploring the academic and the content knowledge concepts, right? So you know, depending on your context. So you take this with a grain of salt too. So I was going to say. For an example, though, if you're teaching about government, you can connect the lessons of recent community events or recent national events as opportunities to teach about government, for an example. So you use critical moments that are happening in young people's communities and are happening across the world, across their nations, to develop a sense of critical consciousness and helping them to start to analyze the questions of societal structures and to think about, you know, how they actually can be change agents, and this can happen across all content areas Mathematics too, because I always get that question about math and working on an episode that's going to be very powerful for those of you engaged in math education from an equity perspective. But in this is the fifth question that you might ask in equity, responsive instruction, as you're planning.
Dr. Terrance L. Green:Well, that is it, folks. Thank you so much for joining. I hope you enjoyed it and I am so excited and really looking forward to our time together during future podcasts. What I need you to do is to please hit the subscribe button, share with a friend and please leave a review. Love you, and if you want to hear more from me, you can head on over to wwwraciallyjustschoolscom. That is wwwraciallyjustschoolscom. When you join our community. I have a free video for you on three tips that will make your racial justice work better. And again, if you love the show, hit, subscribe, rate it and leave a review on iTunes. And until next time, peace.