Teachers’ Texts in Culturally Responsive Teaching

In this paper, the author shares three teaching stories that demonstrate the social, cultural, political, and historical factors of all texts in specific interpretive communities. The author shows how the texts that comprised his curriculum constructed particular subject positions that inevitably included some students but marginalized and excluded others. Coupling critical literacy theory with culturally responsive teaching practices enabled the author to open up the curriculum to students who might otherwise have been shut out by challenging and reformulating these texts. Thus, culturally responsive teaching becomes stronger when coupled with a critical literacy lens. The author concludes with two implications for teachers. One implication is for teachers to recognize and embrace the critical literacy dimensions in the texts that constitute our curricula and, based in culturally responsive pedagogy, anticipate the many ways these texts might situate students and their families. A second implication is for teachers to become responsive to the unanticipated ways that students will respond to texts during curriculum enactment to enable more inclusive teaching practices.