What Life as a Military Brat Taught Me About Cultural Competence and Empathy in the Classroom
When Challenging the Status Quo Almost Got Me Kicked Off a Mission Trip
Why does cultural competence matter for educators?
Cultural competence matters because it helps you understand those you’re working with and teaching. It also provides you with a framework that helps you counter the things you don’t know—because there are always going to be things you don’t know that you don’t know. Being culturally competent means you’re creating space for that. You’re creating a framework in which you can get to know each person as a person and build relationships that foster a sense of community and belonging. Learn about how other teachers are building a sense of belonging in the classroom with this read from Edutopia.
How do a student’s past experiences affect the way they show up in a new classroom or educational environment?
Past experiences affect the way that anyone shows up in any new environment. It’s not surprising then that this is also the case with students entering new educational environments. Part of a student’s challenge with this entrance is that there are certain expectations in a new environment that the student might not be aware of. Each classroom culture is going to be different depending on who is leading that culture, the others inhabiting that culture, and the feedback loops that are in place. A student is at a disadvantage if they haven’t experienced how the instructor fosters the culture desired for the classroom. If a student has experienced environments where bullying happens and the teacher doesn’t do anything—or where the teacher is the bully—that promotes fear of retribution, fear of what could happen. This fear negatively affects the learning environment.
What does empathy look like for an educator working with students from different backgrounds?
When you share a background with someone (whether demographic, psychographic, or socioeconomic), it’s easier to see where they’re coming from because you have a greater degree of similarity that you can draw from. If you’re working with someone from a different perspective, culture, or otherwise a different set of life experiences, you’re not necessarily going to have those similarities in landmarks to refer to. Part of how you can practice empathy is getting to know the person—during educational instruction, projects, and through the feedback loops you create. You want students to understand that what they say matters and that their feedback won’t be disregarded. When your strategy isn’t just lecture-focused but also leans into questions and provides opportunities for students to share how their experience intersects with the material, it provides an opportunity to understand student perspectives and how they’re processing information. As you get that understanding, you’re able to foster greater achievement of educational outcomes and, in some cases, students’ ability to exceed them.
The mission center was one of those places that seemed like a blend between older architecture and internal design that was a bit more modern, but fit the space. In the entrance area, larger booths lined either side with a front desk where one could go to get more information. A session had just ended, and students met in different areas across the center. At one of the booths, a group of college students sat talking about classroom management. They were enrolled in the education department at the university and were listening to another student who was working at a school with younger students while she was attending classes. The conversation had gotten so loud that, from the next room, I heard clearly, “Sometimes, you have to just tell them to sit down and shut up.”
That was the day I almost got kicked off of a mission trip. The reason? Challenging this advice. It was one of those situations where a student doesn’t have any knowledge of cultural competence because their learning environment doesn’t foster it. They hadn’t received that training from their learning experience. And, as far as their community (including their leadership) outside of that direct experience with teacher training, those with influence had similar backgrounds and also lacked that training. Because they didn’t have it, they didn’t recognize its importance. As a result, any challenge to that worldview was seen as a threat and a challenge. The only reaction they could think of to this perceived attack was to remove the threat to this comfort zone.
Why Educators Who Lack Cultural Competence Can’t See What They’re Missing
Seeing your own blind spots is a difficult task. This is why it’s important to have both community and accountability. Other educators with experiences different from your own will be able to see areas of opportunity and growth that you might not. Networking and professional organizations can be good opportunities to make these connections.
What Moving Around Taught Me About Learning Environments and Student Experience
My own perspective and approach to educational environments have definitely been shaped by my experiences with others and the different settings I’ve entered. The settings and people I’ve had the opportunity to interact with are broader, in part, because I grew up as a military brat and a pastor’s kid and moved around quite a bit because of these things. Here are some things I’ve learned through these experiences:
Experiences from one educational environment carry into the next.
I’ve definitely had some positive experiences as a result of continuous change. For example, as a younger student, I remember a teacher who wasn’t my own taking time with me to teach me music. I remember learning a handful of musical notes and the sound of the piano. It was one of those memories that sticks with me to this day. I remember a teacher who cared about me even though he wasn’t formally my teacher. I also remember learning something about the benefits of gamification in the learning process. I wouldn’t have used these words as a young, grade-school student because I didn’t know them. What I did know was that it was pretty sweet to be able to get an ice cream cone every week during 6-week periods when I made the A-honor roll. But just as there were these positive experiences, there were also challenging ones. For example, I remember during one move, I entered an educational environment where I was bullied. On occasion, my bullies chased me across the schoolyard. I stopped to get help from a teacher. The teacher didn’t take me seriously, and I began to run again. That experience was one I carried with me as I entered other educational environments as a student.
Sure, the teacher could’ve probably told those students to sit down and shut up. But it wouldn’t have really been instructional because they would have had an understanding of the why. And context and understanding are just as important as the rules they’re used to enforce.
As a stranger to the educational environment where you have formal influence, new students carry with them their own context. Your ability to engage with them there, in helpful ways, makes a big difference.
Why Educators Who Lack Cultural Competence Can’t See What They’re Missing
Seeing your own blind spots is a difficult task. This is why it’s important to have both community and accountability. Other educators with experiences different from your own will be able to see areas of opportunity and growth that you might not. Networking and professional organizations can be good opportunities to make these connections.
Every New Classroom Has a Learning Curve—For Students and Educators
It might seem like there’s not much of a learning curve when it comes to sitting in a class and learning. But the changing variables mean that there is with every situation, even if they’re difficult to see. For example, a teacher who focuses more on lecture-style instruction brings a different experience to the educational environment than does a class project-heavy instructional load. Teachers who adopt a more hybrid instructional model might not be as easy to adapt to as it might seem. Additionally, with every new class, there are different personalities from other learners, staff and their expectations, even to you as the educator. These are only the variables inside the classroom. When what’s happening outside of the classroom is also a changing environment, that can also produce challenges for the learning environment. This brings us to the ideas of the grounding and the familiar.
What the Search for the Familiar Teaches Educators About Belonging in the Classroom
For the longest time, whenever we moved somewhere, I was on the lookout for libraries and Waffle Houses. The reason for that was that, wherever we moved, no matter what state it was, there would be a library or a Waffle House, sometimes both. When I saw these, I knew that no matter how strange an environment was, at least there’d be something familiar. Eventually, I learned to look for similarities in educational environments as well. However, this can be a bit more difficult depending on how these changes and variations appear. When this is the case, I learned to look for more grounding variables. A clear communication of classroom expectations for both interactions and classroom functions like instruction, homework, projects, etc., is helpful. Having these presented in a clear document, along with information about the culture an educator is trying to foster, is helpful because it gives me an understanding of the boundaries within which my freedom as a student exists. Sometimes personalities in one educational setting are similar to those in another, and so, even in the middle of the unfamiliar, there is something familiar. Additionally, and this isn’t something that I experienced often, but it is something that I appreciated when I encountered it. In these times, educators would provide information about what could be expected from them. It was helpful for me because this communicated care through offering accountability, even though it’s not a required expectation. This joint system of accountability fosters a more friendly environment where a student has more of a desire to succeed. Education is, in some ways, about buy-in from those being instructed, as it is about the material being taught. As a student, this is another thing that I might not have been able to voice in the expected words, but it was definitely felt in my interactions with educators.
Sure, the teacher could’ve probably told those students to sit down and shut up. But it wouldn’t have really been instructional because they would have had an understanding of the why. And context and understanding are just as important as the rules they’re used to enforce.
As a stranger to the educational environment where you have formal influence, new students carry with them their own context. Your ability to engage with them there, in helpful ways, makes a big difference.
What Empathy, Cultural Competence, and Authenticity Look Like in the Classroom
In understanding what it means to enter new educational environments from the perspective of a newly entering stranger, you can also learn more about what empathy and cultural competency mean for you as an educator:
- Empathy is what happens when you first recognize the blind spots present in your view of your own experiences and in your view of the experiences of others. Then, there’s the understanding of the weight of these variables on physical, emotional, and spiritual resilience. You recognize these things as you’re gifted with the presence of the stranger, the new person stepping into the environment that, to you, seems so familiar.
- Cultural competence enables you to enact empathy in ways that speak directly to the heart of the person(s) you’re interacting with. What matters most isn’t how you express love and care, but instead, the way that the person who you’re sharing these with experiences them. One of the variables that helps to shape this is culture. But sitting down with each person one-to-one, interacting with them through projects and assignments and even the establishment of feedback loops that encourage the transmission of both positive and negative feedback and the way in which you respond to this feedback also provide for the fostering of trust, in the educational environment and for a more complete picture of how culture affects the way(s) in which students, mentees, and even others you work with respond to this environment.
- Authenticity gives life to more authenticity. When you communicate authenticity through actions like admitting when you’re wrong, researching topics and concepts you might not understand before committing yourself to answers that could be wrong, and even collaborating on projects with coworkers in ways your students and mentees have the opportunity to see you also model for them. This modeling of authentic action is part of what it means to take on leadership. You also practice more peripheral influence in ways that positively affect the learning environment. Those effects can be felt even as new people enter that environment. helping students feel welcome in a new school environment
If this resonated with you, you’re in the right place. Go deeper in conversation with us as we talk about these topics of parenting/mentorship, relationships, race and tech, and more with a community of educators and changemakers committed to doing the work at the intersection of faith, community, and cultural competency.
Sure, the teacher could’ve probably told those students to sit down and shut up. But it wouldn’t have really been instructional because they would have had an understanding of the why. And context and understanding are just as important as the rules they’re used to enforce.
As a stranger to the educational environment where you have formal influence, new students carry with them their own context. Your ability to engage with them there, in helpful ways, makes a big difference.
Ruth, I enjoy your ‘voice’ and writing style. Keep going!
Thanks, Sharon!