TrillEDU: Culturally Responsive Pedagogy... | Jeffrey Dessources | TEDxNewJerseyCityUniversity

Culturally

responsive

teaching, then, is a

pedagogy

that recognizes the importance of infusing students with cultural references throughout their learning. We see it at the K-12 levels all the time we see teachers trying to make sure their students are getting key knowledge. and adds its culture. We have also seen it within the classroom and at the university level. Brown University actually has a department that focuses on

culturally

responsive

teaching as an important aspect of student development. One of my friends. I do not know if you. I can tell by the beautiful face I gave you today that I used an excellent moisturizer, but I have been working in Student Development in higher education for about 12 years and what I do recognize is as important and essential as being

culturally

. responsive in the classroom it is even more so to make sure that we represent our students as cultural influences and their representation outside of the classroom and what that means to me is that we have to have a conversation about student development and leadership.

I will only give you some elements, some things, some points that will help us understand what we must do to better recognize how to do it, so the first thing I want to talk to you about is raising the level of your communication. We have to have authentic conversations with our young people and not just with our young people, but with anyone who considers themselves a student. Conversations should not only be authentic, but elevated to another level, and for me, when I think about communication, it comes first. What comes to mind is hip-hop. I'm a hip-hop fan who grew up in that era and what I remember is a great DJ.

If you've ever been to a party where there was a terrible DJ, you know what. it happens that the mix is ​​not right the sound is a little off the DJs are not on time they see culturally responsive leadership because that's what we're going to talk about it says we can be the DJs in leadership spaces that means we don't have to mix the two sounds together or mix the two students, that does not mean that we have to make sure that there are always parties, we have to make sure that our students come to our cultural development spaces every day, I say.

I'm a hip hop fan. I told everyone this so another thing that I also love about hip hop and the original elements is graffiti art and what I love about graffiti art is that graffiti art is this representation of colors when everyone thought it was just Se It assumes that we are now black and white, what does that have to do with cultural development and culturally responsive leadership? I will tell you that we have to start diversifying our points of view, our student leaders are not one color, one gender, one type of individual for what we are culturally. receptive and responsible as leaders, educators, students, you know what we have to do, we have to start taking out our aerosol cans and changing the colors, reach the spaces and places that you never thought you could reach, have received graffiti, sometimes it is moving.

The trains are sometimes on top of tall towers and you wonder how they got those beautiful colors there. I told everyone that I'm a hip-hop fan and what I love about hip-hop is also breakdancing and breakdancing was not enough. Something in my house that we couldn't do because my mom, she's a Haitian woman, said we're not going to do any breakdancing in this house, but they were the ones who took risks so for you to be a culturally receptive educator, you have to take a risk. It can't be this individual who is stuck in your standard ways thinking I can go on my merry way and be fine and dandy.

You have to take a risk. You have to go somewhere you never thought you could go. You have to go. to the left when you have always been told that the right was the way to go. I told you I love hip-hop and this importance and its relationship to culturally responsive teaching, education, and leadership. I can't, I can't say enough. about the fact that I'm also an MC when I think about culturally responsive leadership in its effect and its impact on communication, I always say, I was born on crack, I attacked black people, I rapped on the map and quickly adapted to that and vice versa. even the back was great in the city schools and not in the tougher schools than TN.

I pity the silly overzealous narrators who rattle off an out-of-this-world boss like Spike when he was Mars walked into Boston through color Mike Tyson was still nice and all about everyone else, it was a time when he was robbed Buster. Robin here. Jordan often scored to the delight of Boston. The way Jackson acted. Sam acted like a crackhead, but he still made it happen. My versatile flow is like dusty Michael. Well, so you know I should. Being hot worse Pape the campus like he's Basquiat and now I'll tell myself that you're ready and you won't see that it's real sixteen but I still have a few bars left, don't give this a whirl, yeah, but we have to be able to do it. have authentic conversations see that the MC was someone I was able to get out of his head or tell a story because we need storytellers, we need to make sure that the important messages that are happening right in front of us advance the story We can't get stuck in one space and That is why communication levels have to increase.

Can I tell you something else about culturally responsive leadership? This is what I call trill edu, we keep it trill when I talk about culturally responsive leadership, we need to get started. thinking about how we reshape our leadership curriculum model for social change in leadership and so on, and the reason I kind of make fun of that because that model was introduced in 1993 and there's nothing wrong with it being introduced in 1993, but you know who else was there in 1993 Sears I'll tell you who else was the biggest and the baddest in 1993 Macy's Blockbuster Video the biggest and the baddest in 1993 and then all of a sudden something happened there was a shakeup in the culture in those places they just weren't fully prepared and as educators we have to be prepared, we can't be those people who are stuck in the past who haven't innovated well because innovation, my friends, is oxygen for you to really breathe and breathe.

I have to be completely involved and in love with the idea of ​​not just embracing the past and making sure that every step of the present and the future is paid attention to and evolves on a day-to-day basis. I'm from New York City and As a New Yorker, the things that are synonymous with my beautiful city are slices of pizza, the Empire State Building, bad education, that's not true, that last part is not true, but you know, what is also synonymous with New York City is yellow cabs and about seven or eight years ago. a yellow taxi in New York City was worth 1.3 million dollars, that means if you want to drive a yellow taxi in New York you have to have 1.3 million dollars today, my friends, 7 years later, it is worth 250 thousand Dollars.

Father used to say listen if they're not downstairs at 8:15 a.m. They are staying and I used to say there is no way we are going to leave, we will be fine every morning we went down there my mother my sister and I said we will be fine, we went down to the right and everything would be fine until one morning my mother took her time that day and we were about eight sixteen and I told her mom, we were about to leave. She lived in the hood, so you know, the elevators were slow and it was always a super trying to ask us with the water still hot, so we have to go, my dad's about to leave.

I came out and the car was gone. The first thing I thought was, mouse, what? The type of upbringing is this. I have to go to school in the morning, but then my dad played a trick on us, he came around the corner and said, "I told them they can leave any time and I said, wow, my friends showed me that so not only could I leave that car but I can leave myself in any particular space it occupies and so can you and that's why we have to innovate that's why we have to keep changing that's why we have to keep adapting to all the different things listen, I heard you, you might not be on Snapchat or you're not posting Instagram stories, but if you consider yourself an educator, you'll have a better understanding of what those terms mean, you'll have a better understanding of what the new Snapchat update means for your students to understand whether your students are watching Netflix or not, but. beyond all of those things, you need to understand the pain more than the struggle that your students go through when students tell you, listen, my pronouns are he or she or they if you're not being culturally responsive you know what you're doing. you're staying you have to understand from every point along the way what it means to be leaders to be agents of change right now the third thing I always talk about if not I don't mind going to my notebook because I'm going to write.

I'm a poet so sometimes I like to keep my words quiet and when I think about this last thing I want to talk to you about, I'm talking about redefining the definition of what it means to be an educator look, you're an educator there are people in this room who are my students They are my educators there are people in this room who are older than me they are my educators there are people in this room that I have never met in my life and they are my educators, you know, they are my students too, I am a student to them too , we have to redefine the idea of ​​what it means to be an educator if we really want to be culturally responsive in our educational process, we are all educators, that's what I call, we call it the trill edu way, everyone is an educator, but in the same way sense, everyone is also a student, we are not in this space that we are going to. living in these hierarchies where a person, because they have math or maybe even literature too, but there are spaces where we can all learn together and that is what culturally responsive education and leadership is today, we are always struggling to figure out where we can find leaders.

Very often, I have college students come to me and say, Jeff, I know what to do. do after I graduate, Jeff, I can't find a job in my major, Jeff, I'm struggling to recognize what's going to happen next and I'm like, you know what we didn't do a good enough job being culturally responsive to you, we didn't prepare you. for the innovations that are happening outside your space and that is what we have to do if we want to change education in my friend, that is what I am here to do, this is not me having a conversation with you, this is me announcing the movement to reshape and change the idea of ​​education, it is not just me who announces this movement, but I always go to my notebook because it has influences for me and I go to this quote from one of my favorite people in history, you may have heard of her. with the name Harriet Tubman and what Harriet Tubman once said was: I grew up like a neglected weed, ignorant of freedom without having experience and I grew up a careless person.

Many of our students right now are being neglected by educators who are not prepared to be culturally responsive, we have so many students who ignore leadership because our educators choose not to be culturally responsive, but what I love about that quote is that even though she was a neglected weed, somehow unaware of freedom. she made multiple trips over five to nine round trips to identify something she didn't even know existed imagine that imagine finding leadership finding something you didn't even know existed you didn't have a set line for this in the future but Harriet Tubman told them that we will find freedom, so what we are going to do today is commit to finding the freedom of leadership to find the existence that will lead us to a space of cultural responsibility and responsiveness.

This is where we announce the movement. This was the first day and there are many more days to come, so let's come together, find what education really means, be culturally responsive, innovate and find our oxygen. Thank you so much.