#multicultural education

 Identity Matters: Yours and Theirs

A lesson I have shared with teachers throughout my career and in my writing is this: all teachers, regardless of their own identities, can – indeed, must – become culturally responsive and socially just teachers. This is essential if they are serious about forging positive relationships with students (Gay, 2010; Ladson-Billings, 2009). This means teachers must nurture positive attitudes and dispositions about their students and the communities in which they work.

 In research in which I interviewed teachers from around the nation who had been identified by peers or supervisors as effective with students of diverse backgrounds, I found that though they were different from one another in many ways, they shared several attitudes and dispositions (Nieto, 2015). For example, they all believed that teaching is an act of love. They also demonstrated that teaching is an ethical endeavor because it concerns the very lives of young people. In every case, the teachers spoke about the need to keep learning in order to be effective teachers. At the same time, they challenged the status quo by refusing to accept conventional wisdom about their students, or stereotypes about their cultures, their families, or their abilities. Most of all, the teachers I interviewed were fierce advocates for their students, going the extra mile for them in every way they could. María Rosario, a teacher from Chicago who wrote a powerful essay for a book on why teachers continue to teach in spite of many obstacles, wrote about how important it is to value students’ identities:

 Young people deserve to see people who look like them, have had the same experiences as they have, and who can be their advocates when no one else is willing to do the exceptionally hard work that must be done when a child is suffering. Teachers need to be willing to be that advocate when all other people have failed them. I have made the comment to other teachers that if a teacher isn’t willing to listen and hear a child when he or she is being hurt, then they should step aside and do something else with their lives (Rosario, 2015, p. 200).