Take the time to know your students; respect them and their culture.

Renee Moore

William Ayers in his book, To Teach: The Journey of A Teacher, gives one of the best working definitions of culture and its relationship to teaching and learning:

"Culture is an important window into a child....and effective teachers must learn to be lifelong students of culture....Culture includes all the surface objects and characteristics of a people-things like food, art, clothing, music, crafts, and so on. And culture embraces, as well, all the traditions and customs people create: their rituals, games, sports, dialects, habits, and ways of life. But on the deepest and most subtle level, culture also embodies a people's beliefs and values, their way of looking at the world" (75-76).

Ayers goes on to point out that there is very often a cultural gulf between teacher and students. It is the teacher's professional duty to make some sustained effort to understand and to bridge that gulf. There are many ways to accomplish this: talking with and listening to parents; attending community events; listening to community leaders or veteran teachers; listening to your students. In addition, one can do more formal information gathering through surveys. Like many teachers, I have my students write me a letter of introduction as part of the first days of school.

The critical thing is that students know that we really do want to know about them and care about them as persons.

Ayers, William. To Teach: The Journey of A Teacher. New York: Teachers College Press, 2001.