Cultural Competency Resources

A helpful resource from our colleagues at SABES in Massachusetts, this video defines Culturally Responsive and Sustaining Teaching (CRST), in conjunction with Massachusetts' ESOL Professional Standard 3. SABES provides a brief overview of the 5 key elements they use to break down CRST in order to assist educators trying to find more specific ways of implementing these practices in their classrooms. There is also a Flipgrid article that gives more classroom examples of these 5 key elements.

Minnesota Adult Education community members Yixiu Chen and Erin Cary present this two-part series. Part 1 delves into what culturally responsive teaching is, while Part 2 describes Erin's Participatory Curriculum Unit Design Tool. You will learn about many tangible tools to try in your classrooms.

In this video, Zaretta Hammond gives an introduction to her book Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain. She discusses the importance of centering our classrooms around learners' cultural and linguistic identities and experiences. Though she is talking about k-12 schools, there are many valuable parallels to adult education.

In response to a question in the ATLAS Antiracist Praxis Study Circle, this document was made as a companion to Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain by Zaretta Hammond. Even if you haven’t read the book, hopefully you can still follow along the list to see some examples of Culturally Responsive Teaching in action.

Our friends and colleagues at SABES in Massachusetts put together this rich collection of resources for adult English educators who want to be intentional in incorporating antiracist teaching in their classrooms. SABES highlights that many resources are created by historically marginalized community members.

Formerly called Teaching Tolerance, Learning for Justice provides free educational resources founded on their Social Justice Standards, which are divided into four domains: Identity, Diversity, Justice and Action. Their website includes free lessons, learning plans, student texts and tasks, teaching strategies, film kits, printable posters, and a learning plan builder.

Minnesota Adult Education community member Erin Cary created an amazing tool as part of her capstone project at Hamline University. The key to Culturally Responsive Teaching is making the class more relevant to learners' lives, experiences, and goals, and you can't do that without asking them to participate in the creation of the class. This template is an excellent guide to do just that.

A Joint TESOL Quarterly and TESOL Journal Publication This is an online database of articles on race and teaching curated by editors from TESOL Journal and TESOL Quarterly, to support TESOL’s statement against racial injustice and inequality.

These high-quality, relevant materials provide a basis for teachers who want to start conversations about facing racism, racial equity, and other social justice topics pertaining to race in the U.S. The lesson packets are free to download, edit, and use.

In this article the author reveals how English Language Teaching (ELT) centers whiteness and its negative impact on teachers and students of color. The author also provides suggestions for how ELT educators can de-center whiteness in the ELT field.