According to the U.S. Census Bureau, “More than half of the nation’s children under the age of 18 are expected to be part of a minority race or ethnic group” by the year 2020, and this number is only expected to rise. Thus, it is imperative that U.S. school districts recognize this growing number and reinforce cultural competency in our nation’s educators. The ability for teachers in the U.S. to effectively teach students from diverse backgrounds and cultures has never been more important.
The National Education Association (NEA) defines cultural competence in K-12 teaching as “having awareness of one’s own cultural identity while having the ability to understand group differences that make each classroom, and even each student, unique.” Furthermore, the NEA has formulated the following list of important skills to increase cultural competency in teachers to improve student achievement in diverse classrooms.
5 Basic Cultural Competent Skill Areas
-Valuing Diversity “means respecting and accepting different cultural backgrounds, customs, ways of communicating, traditions, values.”
-Being Culturally Self-Aware “is when an educator sums up his or her own experiences and identifies where they fit in family school and society.”
-Dynamics of Difference “is when an individual recognizes mistaken cross-cultural communication and positively responds to the situation.”
-Knowing of Students’ Culture “is important, because it is when teachers have a base of knowledge of their students’ culture.”
-Institutionalizing Cultural Knowledge and Adapting to Diversity “is assessing the culturally competency of educators and the schools they work in, then taking the next step to provide training and knowledge to serve their students and the community.”
Teachers that possess these skills are more likely to incorporate lesson plans with diverse perspectives and cultures, hence, increase student success rates. The TeacherMatch Educators Professional Inventory (EPI) is a data driven platform that “identifies success indicators in highly effective teachers, including cognitive ability, attitudinal factors, teaching skills and qualifications.”
To learn more about hiring culturally competent teachers, please read Amy Vracar’s, Partnerships Manager at TeacherMatch, blog post here.
