Teach Your Students, Not Just Your Content

This article is an excerpt from my latest book, The Language Lens for Content Classrooms: A Guidebook for Teachers, Coaches and Leaders (2nd ed.).

By Sarah B. Ottow


Before planning any academic content, it is crucial to get to know our students and try to put ourselves in their shoes. We can have all the latest and greatest teaching strategies in our toolbox, but if we don’t stop to get to know our students, we may not get that far in actually advancing their learning. It is important to remember that educators are responsible for meeting students where they are and honoring who they are in their learning experiences. Identities must be examined and valued as we plan learning experiences, including our identities as educators and those of our students. Our mindset matters in our approach to teaching students from all different backgrounds. It is imperative to learn about who our students are and what they bring to our classroom instead of assuming that one way of instruction will work—or should work—for all students. This is particularly important with diverse learners whose cultural and linguistic identities may not be represented in a traditional U.S. school setting. 

At Confianza, we teach educators to reflect and deepen what we call an equity-based mindset because we want all educators to strive for access, opportunity, and ultimately equitable outcomes for all students. We promote empathy-building and perspective-taking. In this chapter, I will refer to getting to know our students and integrating their backgrounds as identity investment. Remember, however, that we cannot fully experience what our students and their families (or anyone else for that matter) experience. Plus, who we are impacts how we see others. Let’s exercise curiosity about others’ experiences to meet them where they are, not where we are. Let’s build bridges of understanding so that all students experience a sense of belonging in our classrooms.


A Return on Investment

When we take the time to get to know our students and their unique gifts and experiences, we show them that we care about who they are, want to learn about their experiences, and want to hear their stories and voices. We show them that we are investing in them as people and taking the time to integrate their identities into the classroom. When we honor who our students are, we demonstrate that learning is co-constructed, a constant transaction between teacher and students. When we invest in our students’ identities, we can experience a return on this investment in the form of increased student engagement and higher performance, not to mention potentially more joyful teaching and learning! In other words, when we see engaged students, we are doing something right (Villalobos, 2020).

More than anything, when we value students’ identities, we model the habit of lifelong learning as a member of our learning community, reaping the rewards of learning from our students, something I have become richer for throughout my years of teaching, having worked with hundreds of students from various backgrounds. For every student I have taught, he or she has taught me so much, often things I would never have learned had I been closed to them teaching me. Having been both a classroom teacher and a language specialist, I’ve learned from all my students and their families. Because of their richly diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds, I’ve been able to learn about the world right in my classroom.


Demonstrating Mutual Respect and Trust

It’s important to maintain an asset-based mindset and remember that culturally and linguistically diverse students often bring experiences not always recognized by the general education curriculum. That’s why our job, as their teachers, is to integrate their identities into the classroom. By doing so, we demonstrate mutual respect and trust by exhibiting that we embrace the diversity within our classrooms. In fact, I named my organization Confianza after this cultural concept. Confianza in Spanish means mutual respect and trust, which is at the heart of all learning. I came across the word confianza when living and working in Spanish-speaking communities. One of the beautiful parts of knowing more than one language is that some words and concepts simply do not translate. Confianza is one of those words! 

A big part of my language lens approach is bringing in students’ and families' (and educators’!) funds of knowledge. Funds of knowledge is a key concept in working with culturally and linguistically diverse students and families (González, Moll, & Amanti, 2005; Moll, 1992). When we incorporate students’ funds of knowledge with our students, we enact confianza. In this way, we can help make sure that students feel included in the classroom and in charge of their own learning careers. Plus, we might even learn something new about our students, our community, or the world! Ultimately, by more intentionally incorporating of students’ home lives or funds of knowledge into our planning, we can hope for a subsequent increase in engagement and overall performance. Remember: We are all Academic Language Learners so the more we can bridge students’ home experiences to school, the better!


A Global and Multicultural Perspective

Often with some students, we may see a disconnection between home and school. One reason is that, aside from the language being a challenge, much of the curriculum may feature topics from the dominant culture and dominant lexicon that may not be readily accessible to learners from other cultures and language groups. For example, when studying literature, science, social studies, and even math, we generally come from a white, Anglo, Western perspective, not necessarily a global one, a multicultural one nor a multilingual one. If we can uncover this mismatch of student experience to the curriculum, we may be able to enhance our curriculum to better match the lives of our students. If our goal is for students to be more engaged in the classroom, doesn’t it make sense that their identities are somehow present in it? If students aren’t engaged in the curriculum, disenfranchisement, underperformance, not to mention behavior issues, can result. As my esteemed graduate advisor, the late Dr. Martin Haberman at the University of Wisconsin, would always say, The best classroom management is a student-centered curriculum. I worked hard in my formative teaching years to make the curriculum more meaningful for my students so that they could see their identities reflected in the classroom and be inspired to contribute, learn, and grow. This is the art of teaching.

First things first, learn to pronounce students’ names the way they want to have them pronounced. I recommend that we refrain from assuming we know how names are pronounced. We can simply ask. My last name gets mispronounced all the time, so I use a mnemonic device; it’s AUTO, like automobile! Some educators I work with have the student say their name in a private video or audio clip so that it can be referenced for easy access. Other educators write down how to pronounce names’ phonetically in a way that can help them remember. Pronouncing names correctly also applies to the names of siblings, parents, and guardians. People have names, and names represent a big part of people’s identities. 

My hope here is for you to consider how you invest in your students’ identities in order to demonstrate respect for their backgrounds and to provide connections to the topic at hand. The role of the teacher is critical in setting the tone for students and exemplifying safe, respectful learning. By connecting students’ lives and their families’ lives to the curriculum more intentionally, we can enact a richer learning experience overall. So how do we do this? How can we invest in our students’ identities?


References:

Villalobos, Jessica. (2020). An Asset-Based Approach to Support ELL Success. ASCD. Retrieved from https://www.ascd.org/el/articles/an-asset-based-approach-to-support-ell-success

González, N., Moll, L. & Amanti, C. (2005). Funds of Knowledge: Theorizing Practices in Households, Communities and Classrooms. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

To Further Your Learning:

Curriculum and Instruction, Family Student EngagementSarah Ottow1a, 2b, 5b