Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 53, No. 2, MarchApril 2002.docx

Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 53, No. 2, March/April
2002Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 53, No. 2, March/April
2002
2001 AACTE OUTSTANDING WRITING AWARD RECIPIENT
Editor’s Note: This article draws from Geneva Gay’s recent
book, Culturally Responsive
Teaching: Theory, Research, and Practice, which received the
2001 Outstanding Writing
Award from the American Association of Colleges for Teacher
Education.
PREPARING FOR CULTURALLY RESPONSIVE TEACHING
Geneva Gay
University of Washington, Seattle
In this article, a case is made for improving the
school success of ethnically diverse students
through culturally responsive teaching and for
preparing teachers in preservice education pro-
grams with the knowledge, attitudes, and skills
needed to do this. The ideas presented here are
brief sketches of more thorough explanations
included in my recent book, Culturally Respon-
sive Teaching: Theory, Research, and Practice (2000).
The specific components of this approach to
teaching are based on research findings, theo-
retical claims, practical experiences, and per-
sonal stories of educators researching and work-
ing with underachieving African, Asian, Latino,

and Native American students. These data were
produced by individuals from a wide variety of
disciplinary backgrounds including anthropol-
ogy, sociology, psychology, sociolinguistics, com-
munications, multicultural education, K-college
classroom teaching, and teacher education. Five
essential elements of culturally responsive teach-
ing are examined: developing a knowledge base
about cultural diversity, including ethnic and
cultural diversity content in the curriculum, dem-
onstrating caring and building learning com-
munities, communicating with ethnically diverse
students, and responding to ethnic diversity in
the delivery of instruction. Culturally responsive
teaching is defined as using the cultural charac-
teristics, experiences, and perspectives of ethni-
cally diverse students as conduits for teaching
them more effectively. It is based on the assump-
tion that when academic knowledge and skills
are situated within the lived experiences and
frames of reference of students, they are more
personally meaningful, have higher interest ap-
peal, and are learned more easily and thoroughly
(Gay, 2000). As a result, the academic achieve-
ment of ethnically diverse students will improve
when they are taught through their own cul-
tural and experiential filters (Au & Kawakami,
1994; Foster, 1995; Gay, 2000; Hollins, 1996;
Kleinfeld, 1975; Ladson-Billings, 1994, 1995).
DEVELOPING A CULTURAL
DIVERSITY KNOWLEDGE BASE
Educators generally agree that effective teach-
ing requires mastery of content knowledge and

pedagogical skills. As Howard (1999) so aptly
stated, “We can’t teach what we don’t know.”
This statement applies to knowledge both of
student populations and subject matter. Yet, too
many teachers are inadequately prepared to teach
ethnically diverse students. Some professional
programs still equivocate about including multi-
cultural education despite the growing num-
bers of and disproportionately poor performance
of students of color. Other programs are trying
to decide what is the most appropriate place and
“face” for it. A few are embracing multicultural
education enthusiastically. The equivocation is
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Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 53, No. 2, March/April 2002
106-116
© 2002 by the American Association of Colleges for Teacher
Education
inconsistent with preparing for culturally respon-
sive teaching, which argues that explicit knowl-
edge about cultural diversity is imperative to
meetingtheeducationalneedsofethnicallydiverse
students.
Part of this knowledge includes understand-
ing the cultural characteristics and contribu-
tions of different ethnic groups (Hollins, King, &
Hayman, 1994; King, Hollins, & Hayman, 1997;
Pai, 1990; Smith, 1998). Culture encompasses
many things, some of which are more important
for teachers to know than others because they

have direct implications for teaching and learn-
ing. Among these are ethnic groups’ cultural
values, traditions, communication, learning styles,
contributions, and relational patterns. For exam-
ple, teachers need to know (a) which ethnic
groups give priority to communal living and
cooperative problem solving and how these pref-
erences affect educational motivation, aspira-
tion, and task performance; (b) how different
ethnic groups’ protocols of appropriate ways
for children to interact with adults are exhibited
in instructional settings; and (c) the implications
of gender role socialization in different ethnic
groups for implementing equity initiatives in
classroom instruction. This information consti-
tutes the first essential component of the knowl-
edge base of culturally responsive teaching. Some
of the cultural characteristics and contributions
of ethnic groups that teachers need to know are
explained in greater detail by Gold, Grant, and
Rivlin (1977); Shade (1989); Takaki (1993); Banks
and Banks (1995); and Spring (1995).
The knowledge that teachers need to have
about cultural diversity goes beyond mere aware-
ness of, respect for, and general recognition of
the fact that ethnic groups have different values
or express similar values in various ways. Thus,
the second requirement for developing a knowl-
edge base for culturally responsive teaching is
acquiring detailed factual information about the
cultural particularities of specific ethnic groups
(e.g., African, Asian, Latino, and Native Ameri-
can). This is needed to make schooling more
interesting and stimulating for, representative
of, and responsive to ethnically diverse students.

Too many teachers and teacher educators think
that their subjects (particularly math and sci-
ence) and cultural diversity are incompatible, or
that combining them is too much of a concep-
tual and substantive stretch for their subjects to
maintain disciplinary integrity. This is simply
not true. There is a place for cultural diversity in
every subject taught in schools. Furthermore,
culturally responsive teaching deals as much
with using multicultural instructional strate-
gies as with adding multicultural content to the
curriculum. Misconceptions like these stem, in
part, from the fact that many teachers do not
know enough about the contributions that dif-
ferent ethnic groups have made to their subject
areas and are unfamiliar with multicultural edu-
cation. They may be familiar with the achieve-
ments of select, high-profile individuals from
some ethnic groups in some areas, such as Afri-
can American musicians in popular culture or
politicians in city, state, and national govern-
ment. Teachers may know little or nothing about
the contributions of Native Americans and Asian
Americans in the same arenas. Nor do they
know enough about the less publicly visible but
very significant contributions of ethnic groups
in science, technology, medicine, math, theol-
ogy, ecology, peace, law, and economics.
Many teachers also are hard-pressed to have
an informed conversation about leading multi-
cultural education scholars and their major pre-
mises, principles, and proposals. What they think
they know about the field is often based on
superficial or distorted information conveyed

through popular culture, mass media, and crit-
ics. Or their knowledge reflects cursory aca-
demic introductions that provide insufficient
depth of analysis of multicultural education.
These inadequacies can be corrected by teach-
ers’ acquiring more knowledge about the con-
tributions of different ethnic groups to a wide
variety of disciplines and a deeper understand-
ing of multicultural education theory, research,
and scholarship. This is a third important pillar
of the knowledge foundation of culturally respon-
sive teaching. Acquiring this knowledge is not
as difficult as it might at first appear. Ethnic
individuals and groups have been making wor-
thy contributions to the full range of life and cul-
ture in the United States and humankind from
the very beginning. And there is no shortage of
107
quality information available about multicul-
tural education. It just has to be located, learned,
and woven into the preparation programs of
teachers and classroom instruction. This can be
accomplished, in part, by all prospective teach-
ers taking courses on the contributions of ethnic
groups to the content areas that they will teach
and on multicultural education.
DESIGNING CULTURALLY
RELEVANT CURRICULA
In addition to acquiring a knowledge base

about ethnic and cultural diversity, teachers need
to learn how to convert it into culturally respon-
sive curriculum designs and instructional strat-
egies. Three kinds of curricula are routinely
present in the classroom, each of which offers
different opportunities for teaching cultural
diversity. The first is formal plans for instruction
approved by the policy and governing bodies of
educational systems. They are usually anchored
in and complemented by adopted textbooks
and other curriculum guidelines such as the
“standards” issued by national commissions,
state departments of education, professional asso-
ciations, and local school districts. Even though
these curriculum documents have improved over
time in their treatment of ethnic and cultural
diversity, they are still not as good as they need
to be (Wade, 1993). Culturally responsive teach-
ers know how to determine the multicultural
strengths and weaknesses of curriculum designs
and instructional materials and make the changes
necessary to improve their overall quality. These
analyses should focus on the quantity, accuracy,
complexity, placement, purpose, variety, signif-
icance, and authenticity of the narrative texts,
visual illustrations, learning activities, role mod-
els, and authorial sources used in the instruc-
tional materials. There are several recurrent trends
in how formal school curricula deal with ethnic
diversity that culturally responsive teachers need
to correct. Among them are avoiding controver-
sial issues such as racism, historical atrocities,
powerlessness, and hegemony; focusing on the
accomplishments of the same few high-profile
individuals repeatedly and ignoring the actions
of groups; giving proportionally more attention

to African Americans than other groups of color;
decontextualizing women, their issues, and their
actions from their race and ethnicity; ignoring
poverty; and emphasizing factual information
while minimizing other kinds of knowledge (such
as values, attitudes, feelings, experiences, and
ethics). Culturally responsive teaching reverses
these trends by dealing directly with contro-
versy; studying a wide range of ethnic individu-
als and groups; contextualizing issues within
race, class, ethnicity, and gender; and including
multiple kinds of knowledge and perspectives.
It also recognizes that these broad-based analy-
ses are necessary to do instructional justice to
the complexity, vitality, and potentiality of eth-
nic and cultural diversity. One specific way to
begin this curriculum transformation process is
to teach preservice (and inservice) teachers how
to do deep cultural analyses of textbooks and
other instructional materials, revise them for
better representations of culturally diversity, and
provide many opportunities to practice these
skills under guided supervision. Teachers need
to thoroughly understand existing obstacles to
culturally responsive teaching before they can
successfully remove them.
Other instructional plans used frequently in
schools are called the symbolic curriculum (Gay,
1995). They include images, symbols, icons, mot-
toes, awards, celebrations, and other artifacts
that are used to teach students knowledge, skills,
morals, and values. The most common forms of
symbolic curricula are bulletin board decora-
tions; images of heroes and heroines; trade books;

and publicly displayed statements of social eti-
quette, rules and regulations, ethical principles,
and tokens of achievement. Therefore, class-
room and school walls are valuable “advertis-
ing” space, and students learn important les-
sons from what is displayed there. Over time,
they come to expect certain images, value what
is present, and devalue that which is absent.
Culturally responsive teachers are critically con-
scious of the power of the symbolic curriculum
as an instrument of teaching and use it to help
convey important information, values, and actions
about ethnic and cultural diversity. They ensure
that the images displayed in classrooms repre-
sent a wide variety of age, gender, time, place,
social class, and positional diversity within and
108 Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 53, No. 2, March/April
2002
across ethnic groups and that they are accurate
extensions of what is taught through the formal
curriculum. For example, lessons of leadership,
power, and authority taught through images
should include males and females and expres-
sive indicators of these accomplishments from
many different ethnic groups.
A third type of curriculum that is fundamen-
tal to culturally responsive teaching is what
Cortés (1991, 1995, 2000) has called the societal
curriculum. This is the knowledge, ideas, and
impressions about ethnic groups that are por-
trayed in the mass media. Television programs,

newspapers, magazines, and movies are much
more than mere factual information or idle enter-
tainment. They engage in ideological manage-
ment (Spring, 1992) and construct knowledge
(Cortés, 1995) because their content reflects and
conveys particular cultural, social, ethnic, and
political values, knowledge, and advocacies. For
many students, mass media is the only source of
knowledge about ethnic diversity; for others,
what is seen on television is more influential
and memorable than what is learned from books
inclassrooms.Unfortunately,muchof this“knowl-
edge” is inaccurate and frequently prejudicial.
In a study of ethnic stereotyping in news report-
ing, Campbell (1995) found that these programs
perpetuate “myths about life outside of white
‘mainstream’ America . . . [that] contribute to an
understanding of minority cultures as less sig-
nificant, as marginal” (p. 132). Members of both
minority and majority groups are negatively
affected by these images and representations.
Ethnic distortions in mass media are not limited
to news programs; they are pervasive in other
types of programming as well. The messages
they transmit are too influential for teachers to
ignore. Therefore, culturally responsive teach-
ing includes thorough and critical analyses of
how ethnic groups and experiences are pre-
sented in mass media and popular culture.
Teachers need to understand how media images
of African, Asian, Latino, Native, and European
Americans are manipulated; the effects they have
on different ethnic groups; what formal school
curricula and instruction can do to counteract
their influences; and how to teach students to be
discerning consumers of and resisters to ethnic

information disseminated through the societal
curriculum.
DEMONSTRATING CULTURAL CARING
AND BUILDING A LEARNING COMMUNITY
A third critical component of preparation for
culturally responsive teaching is creating class-
room climates that are conducive to learning for
ethnically diverse students. Pedagogical actions
are as important as (if not more important than)
multicultural curriculum designs in implement-
ing culturally responsive teaching. They are not
simply technical processes of applying any “best
practices” to underachieving students of color,
however. Much more is required. Teachers need
to know how to use cultural scaffolding in teach-
ing these students—that is, using their own cul-
tures and experiences to expand their intellec-
tual horizons and academic achievement. This
begins by demonstrating culturally sensitive car-
ing and building culturally responsive learning
communities. Teachers have to care so much
about ethnically diverse students and their
achievement that they accept nothing less than
high-level success from them and work dili-
gently to accomplish it (Foster, 1997; Kleinfeld,
1974, 1975). This is a very different conception of
caring than the often-cited notion of “gentle
nurturing and altruistic concern,” which can
lead to benign neglect under the guise of letting
students of color make their own way and move
at their own pace.
Culturally responsive caring also places “teach-

ers in an ethical, emotional, and academic part-
nership with ethnically diverse students, a part-
nership that is anchored in respect, honor, integ-
rity, resource sharing, and a deep belief in the
possibility of transcendence” (Gay, 2000, p. 52).
Caring is a moral imperative, a social responsi-
bility, and a pedagogical necessity. It requires
that teachers use “knowledge and strategic think-
ing to decide how to act in the best interests of
others . . . [and] binds individuals to their soci-
ety, to their communities, and to each other”
(Webb, Wilson, Corbett, & Mordecai, 1993, pp. 33-
34). In culturally responsive teaching, the “knowl-
edge” of interest is information about ethnically
diverse groups; the “strategic thinking” is how
this cultural knowledge is used to redesign teach-
109
ing and learning; and the “bounds” are the reci-
procity involved in students working with each
other and with teachers as partners to improve
their achievement. Thus, teachers need to under-
stand that culturally responsive caring is action
oriented in that it demonstrates high expecta-
tions and uses imaginative strategies to ensure
academic success for ethnically diverse students.
Teachers genuinely believe in the intellectual
potential of these students and accept, unequiv-
ocally, their responsibility to facilitate its real-
ization without ignoring, demeaning, or neglect-
ing their ethnic and cultural identities. They
build toward academic success from a basis of

cultural validation and strength.
Building community among diverse learners
is another essential element of culturally respon-
sive teaching. Many students of color grow up
in cultural environments where the welfare of
the group takes precedence over the individual
and where individuals are taught to pool their
resources to solve problems. It is not that indi-
viduals and their needs are neglected; they are
addressed within the context of group function-
ing. When the group succeeds or falters, so do
its individual members. As a result, the group
functions somewhat like a “mutual aid society”
in which all members are responsible for help-
ing each other perform and ensuring that every-
one contributes to the collective task. The posi-
tive benefits of communities of learners and
cooperative efforts on student achievement have
been validated by Escalanté and Dirmann (1990)
in high school mathematics for Latinos; by Sheets
(1995) in high school Spanish language and lit-
erature with low-achieving Latinos; by Fullilove
and Treisman (1990) in 1st-year college calculus
with African, Latino, and Chinese Americans;
and by Tharp and Gallimore (1988) in elemen-
tary reading and language arts with Native
Hawaiian children. These ethics and styles of
working are quite different from the typical
ones used in schools, which give priority to the
individual and working independently. Cul-
turally responsive teachers understand how con-
flicts between different work styles may inter-
fere with academic efforts and outcomes, and
they understand how to design more commu-
nal learning environments.

The process of building culturally responsive
communities of learning is important for teach-
ers to know as well. The emphasis should be on
holistic or integrated learning. Contrary to the
tendency in conventional teaching to make dif-
ferent types of learning (cognitive, physical, emo-
tional) discrete, culturally responsive teaching
deals with them in concert. Personal, moral,
social, political, cultural, and academic knowl-
edge and skills are taught simultaneously. For
example, students are taught their cultural heri-
tages and positive ethnic identity development
along with math, science, reading, critical think-
ing, and social activism. They also are taught
about the heritages, cultures, and contributions
of other ethnic groups as they are learning their
own. Culturally responsive teachers help stu-
dents to understand that knowledge has moral
and political elements and consequences, which
obligate them to take social action to promote
freedom, equality, and justice for everyone. The
positive effects of teaching these knowledges
and skills simultaneously for African, Asian,
Latino, and Native American students are docu-
mented by Ladson-Billings (1994); Foster (1995);
Krater, Zeni, & Cason, (1994); Tharp & Gallimore
(1988); Escalanté and Dirmann (1990); and Sheets
(1995).
CROSS-CULTURAL COMMUNICATIONS
Effective cross-cultural communication is a
fourth pivotal element of preparing for cultur-
ally responsive teaching. Porter and Samovar
(1991) explained that culture influences “what

we talk about; how we talk about it; what we
see, attend to, or ignore; how we think; and what
we think about” (p. 21). Montagu and Watson
(1979) added that communication is the “ground
of meeting and the foundation of community”
(p. vii) among human beings. Without this “meet-
ing” and “community” in the classroom, learn-
ing is difficult to accomplish for some students.
In fact, determining what ethnically diverse stu-
dents know and can do, as well as what they are
capable of knowing and doing, is often a func-
tion of how well teachers can communicate with
them. The intellectual thought of students from
different ethnic groups is culturally encoded
(Cazden, John, & Hymes, 1985) in that its expres-
2002
sive forms and substance are strongly influ-
enced by cultural socialization. Teachers need to
be able to decipher these codes to teach ethni-
cally diverse students more effectively.
As is the case with any cultural component,
characteristics of ethnic communication styles
are core traits of group trends, not descriptions
of the behaviors of individual members of the
group. Whether and how particular individuals
manifest these characteristics vary along con-
tinua of depth, clarity, frequency, purity, pur-
pose, and place. However, expressive variabil-
ity of cultural characteristics among ethnic group
members does not nullify their existence. It is

imperative for teachers to understand these reali-
ties because many of them are hesitant about
dealing with cultural descriptors for fear of ste-
reotyping and overgeneralizing. They compen-
sate for this danger by trying to ignore or deny
the existence of cultural influences on students’
behaviors and their own. The answer is not
denial or evasion but direct confrontation and
thorough, critical knowledge of the interactive
relationships between culture, ethnicity, com-
munication, and learning and between individ-
uals and groups.
Culturally responsive teacher preparation pro-
grams teach how the communication styles of
different ethnic groups reflect cultural values
and shape learning behaviors and how to mod-
ify classroom interactions to better accommo-
date them. They include knowledge about the
linguistic structures of various ethnic communi-
cation styles as well as contextual factors, cul-
tural nuances, discourse features, logic and
rhythm, delivery, vocabulary usage, role rela-
tionships of speakers and listeners, intonation,
gestures, and body movements. Research reported
by Cazden et al. (1985), Kochman (1981), and
Smitherman (1994) indicated that the discourse
features of cultural communications are more
challenging and problematic in teaching ethni-
cally different students than structural linguistic
elements. The cultural markers and nuances
embedded in the communicative behaviors of
highly ethnically affiliated Latino, Native,
Asian, and African Americans are difficult to
recognize, understand, accept, and respond to

without corresponding cultural knowledge of
these ethnic groups.
There are several other more specific compo-
nents of the communication styles of ethnic groups
that should be part of the preparation for and
practice of culturally responsive teaching. One
of these is the protocols of participation in dis-
course. Whereas in mainstream schooling and
culture a passive-receptive style of communica-
tion and participation predominates, many groups
of color use an active-participatory one. In the
first, communication is didactic, with the speaker
playing the active role and the listener being
passive. Students are expected to listen quietly
while teachers talk and to talk only at prescribed
times when granted permission by the teacher.
Their participation is usually solicited by teach-
ers’ asking convergent questions that are posed
to specific individuals and require factual, “right
answer” responses. This pattern is serialized in
that it is repeated from one student to the next
(Goodlad, 1984; Philips, 1983).
In contrast, the communicative styles of most
ethnic groups of color in the United States are
more active, participatory, dialectic, and multi-
modal. Speakers expect listeners to engage with
them as they speak by providing prompts, feed-
back, and commentary. The roles of speaker and
listener are fluid and interchangeable. Among
African Americans, this interactive communi-
cative style is referred to as “call-response” (Baber,
1987; Smitherman, 1977); and for Native Hawai-
ians, it is called “talk-story” (Au, 1993; Au &
Kawakami, 1994). Among European American

females, the somewhat similar practice of “talk-
ing along with the speaker” to show involve-
ment, support, and confirmation is described as
“rapport talk” (Tannen, 1990). These communal
communication styles can be problematic in the
classroom for both teachers and students. Unin-
formed and unappreciative teachers consider
them rude, distractive, and inappropriate and
take actions to squelch them. Students who are
told not to use them may be, in effect, intellectu-
ally silenced. Because they are denied use of
their natural ways of talking, their thinking,
intellectual engagement, and academic efforts
are diminished as well.
111
Another communication technique important
to doing culturally responsive teaching is under-
standing different ethnic groups’ patterns of task
engagement and organizing ideas. In school, stu-
dents are taught to be very direct, precise, deduc-
tive, and linear in communication. That is, they
should be parsimonious in talking and writing,
avoid using lots of embellishment, stay focused
on the task or stick to the point, and build a logi-
cal case from the evidence to the conclusion,
from the parts to the whole. When issues are
debated and information is presented, students
are expected to be objective, dispassionate, and
explicit in reporting carefully sequential facts.
The quality of the discourse is determined by
the clarity of the descriptive information pro-

vided; the absence of unnecessary verbiage, flair,
or drama; and how easily the listener (or reader)
can discern the logic and relationship of the
ideas (Kochman, 1981). Researchers and schol-
ars call this communicative style topic-centered
(Au, 1993; Michaels 1981, 1984). Many African,
Asian, Latino, and Native Americans use a dif-
ferent approach to organizing and transmitting
ideas: one called topic-chaining communication.
It is highly contextual, and much time is devoted
to setting a social stage prior to the performance
of an academic task. This is accomplished by the
speakers’ (or writers’) providing a lot of back-
ground information; being passionately and per-
sonally involved with the content of the dis-
course; using much indirectness (such as innu-
endo, symbolism, and metaphor) to convey ideas;
weaving many different threads or issues into a
single story; and embedding talk with feelings
of intensity, advocacy, evaluation, and aesthet-
ics. There also is the tendency to make the dis-
course conversational (Au, 1993; Fox, 1994;
Kochman, 1981; Smitherman, 1994). The think-
ing of these speakers appears to be circular, and
their communication sounds like storytelling.
To one who is unfamiliar with it, this communi-
cation style “sounds rambling, disjointed, and
as if the speaker never ends a thought before
going on to something else” (Gay, 2000, p. 96).
These (and other) differences in ethnic commu-
nication styles have many implications for cul-
turally responsive teaching. Understanding them
is necessary to avoid violating the cultural val-
ues of ethnically diverse students in instruc-
tional communications; to better decipher their

intellectual abilities, needs, and competencies;
and to teach them style or code-shifting skills so
that they can communicate in different ways
with different people in different settings for
different purposes. Therefore, multicultural com-
munication competency is an important goal and
component of culturally responsive teaching.
CULTURAL CONGRUITY IN
CLASSROOM INSTRUCTION
The final aspect of preparation for culturally
responsive teaching discussed in this article deals
with the actual delivery of instruction to ethni-
cally diverse students. Culture is deeply embed-
ded in any teaching; therefore, teaching ethni-
cally diverse students has to be multiculturalized.
A useful way to think about operationalizing
this idea in the act of teaching is matching instruc-
tional techniques to the learning styles of diverse
students. Or, as the contributing authors to Edu-
cation and Cultural Process (Spindler, 1987) sug-
gested, establishing continuity between the modus
operandi of ethnic groups and school cultures in
teaching and learning. Many possibilities for
establishing these matches, intersections, or
bridges are implied in the previous discussions.
For example, a topic-chaining communication
style is very conducive to a storytelling teaching
style. Cooperative group learning arrangements
and peer coaching fit well with the communal
cultural systems of African, Asian, Native, and
Latino American groups (Gay, 2000; Spring, 1995).
Autobiographical case studies and fiction can
crystallize ethnic identity and affiliation issues
across contextual boundaries (i.e., geographic,

generational, temporal). Motion and movement,
music, frequent variability in tasks and formats,
novelty, and dramatic elements in teaching
improve the academic performance of African
Americans (Allen & Boykin, 1992; Allen & But-
ler, 1996; Boykin, 1982; Guttentag & Ross, 1972;
Hanley, 1998).
Cultural characteristics provide the criteria
for determining how instructional strategies
should be modified for ethnically diverse stu-
dents. Developing skills in this area should begin
with teacher education students confronting the
2002
misconceptions and controversies surrounding
learning styles. Some might be resolved by under-
standing that learning styles are how individu-
als engage in the process of learning, not their
intellectual abilities. Like all cultural phenom-
ena, they are complex, multidimensional, and
dynamic. There is room for individuals to move
around within the characteristics of particular
learning styles, and they can be taught to cross
style parameters. Learning styles do have core
structures, and specific patterns by ethnic groups
are discernible (see, for instance, Shade, 1989).
The internal structure of ethnic learning styles
includes at least eight key components (which
are configured differently for various groups):
preferred content; ways of working through learn-
ing tasks; techniques for organizing and con-

veying ideas and thoughts; physical and social
settings for task performance; structural arrange-
ments of work, study, and performance space;
perceptual stimulation for receiving, process-
ing, and demonstrating comprehension and com-
petence; motivations, incentives, and rewards
for learning; and interpersonal interactional styles.
These dimensions provide different points of
entry and emphasis for matching instruction to
the learning styles of students from various eth-
nic groups. To respond most effectively to them,
teachers need to know how they are configured
for different ethnic groups as well as the patterns
of variance that exist within the configurations.
Another powerful way to establish cultural
congruity in teaching is integrating ethnic and
cultural diversity into the most fundamental
and high-status aspects of the instructional pro-
cess on a habitual basis. An examination of
school curricula and measures of student achieve-
ment indicates that the highest stakes and high-
est status school subjects or skill areas are math,
science, reading, and writing. Teachers should
learn how to multiculturalize these especially,
although all formal and informal aspects of the
educational process also should be changed.
Further analysis of teaching behaviors reveals
that a high percentage of instructional time is
devoted to giving examples, scenarios, and
vignettes to demonstrate how information,
principles, concepts, and skills operate in prac-
tice. These make up the pedagogical bridges that
connect prior knowledge with new knowledge,
the known with the unknown, and abstractions

with lived realities. Teachers need to develop
rich repertoires of multicultural instructional
examples to use in teaching ethnically diverse
students.
This is not something that happens automati-
cally or simply because we want it to. It is a
learned skill that should be taught in teacher
preparation programs. The process begins with
understanding the role and prominence of ex-
amples in the instructional process, knowing
the cultures and experiences of different ethnic
groups, harvesting teaching examples from these
critical sources, and learning how to apply multi-
cultural examples in teaching other knowledge
and skills—for instance, using illustrations of
ethnic architecture, fabric designs, and recipes
in teaching geometric principles, mathematical
operations, and propositional thought. Or us-
ing various samples of ethnic literature in teach-
ing the concept of genre and reading skills such
as comprehension, inferential thinking, vocabu-
lary building, and translation. Research indi-
cates that culturally relevant examples have pos-
itive effects on the academic achievement of eth-
nically diverse students. Boggs, Watson-Gegeo,
and McMillen (1985) and Tharp and Gallimore
(1988) demonstrated these effects for Native Ha-
waiians; Foster (1989), Lee (1993), and Moses
and Cobb (2001) for African Americans; García
(1999) for Latinos and limited-English speakers;
and Lipka and Mohatt (1998) for Native Alas-
kans. Observations made by Lipka and Mohatt
on their research and practice with using cul-
tural examples to teach math and science to
Yup’ik students in Alaska underscored the im-

portance and benefits of these strategies for im-
proving school achievement. They noted that
Important connections between an aboriginal sys-
tem of numbers and measurements and the hunting
and gathering context from which it derived can be
used as a bridge to the decontextualized abstract
system often used in teaching mathematics and sci-
ence, . . . can demystify how mathematics and sci-
ence are derived . . . [and] visualize . . . ways in which
everyday tasks and knowledge can be a basis for
learning in formal schooling. (p. 176).
A wide variety of other techniques for incor-
porating culturally diverse contributions, expe-
113
riences, and perspectives into classroom teaching
can be extracted from the work of these and
other scholars. They are valuable models and
incentives for doing culturally responsive teach-
ing and should be a routine part of teacher prep-
aration programs.
CONCLUSION
The components of the preparation for and
practice of culturally responsive teaching included
in this discussion are not inclusive. There is
much more to know, think, and do. These sug-
gestions are merely samples of the knowledge
and skills needed to prepare teachers to work

more effectively with students who are not part
of the U.S. ethnic, racial, and cultural main-
stream. This preparation requires a more thor-
ough knowledge of the specific cultures of dif-
ferent ethnic groups, how they affect learning
behaviors, and how classroom interactions and
instruction can be changed to embrace these dif-
ferences. Because culture strongly influences the
attitudes, values, and behaviors that students
and teachers bring to the instructional process,
it has to likewise be a major determinant of how
the problems of underachievement are solved.
This mandate for change is both simple and pro-
found. It is simple because it demands for ethni-
cally different students that which is already
being done for many middle-class, European
American students—that is, the right to grapple
with learning challenges from the point of strength
and relevance found in their own cultural frames
of reference. It is profound because, to date, U.S.
education has not been very culturally respon-
sive to ethnically diverse students. Instead, these
students have been expected to divorce them-
selves from their cultures and learn according to
European American cultural norms. This places
them in double jeopardy—having to master the
academic tasks while functioning under cul-
tural conditions unnatural (and often unfamil-
iar) to them. Removing this second burden is a
significant contribution to improving their aca-
demic achievement. This can be done by all
teachers’ being culturally responsive to ethni-
cally diverse students throughout their instruc-
tional processes. But they cannot be reasonably
held accountable for doing so if they are not ade-

quately prepared. Therefore, teacher preparation
programs must be as culturally responsive to
ethnic diversity as K-12 classroom instruction.
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Geneva Gay is a professor of education at the Univer-

sity of Washington, Seattle, where she teaches courses in
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within the graduate studies and teacher education pro-
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2002
Assignment 2 J. Moore
This assignment is for a 10th grade
Using your academic institution’s website, write a brief
paragraph that lists the following: tutoring services available,
lab hours, and three other support services that would be
beneficial resources to you as a student.
https://www.wccs.edu/
GloriaAnzaldja
Borderlands

t3b&ñflt
Second Edition
IRA J. TAYLOR LtBRNy
THE 1L1FF SCHOOL OF ThEOLOGY
DNVER.
CU%RApçtint ute 00
Copyright (c) 1987, 1999 by Gloria Anzaidüa
Copyright (c) 1999 by Karin Ikas
Mi rights reserved
Second Edition
10-9-8-
Aunt Lute Books
P0. Box 410687
San Francisco, CA 94141
Holy ReLics” first appeared in Conditions Six, 1980.
“Cervicide” first appeared in Labyris, A Feminist Arts Journal,
Vol. 4,
No. 11, Winter 1983.
“En ci nombre tie todas las madres que ban perdido sus hifvs en
Ia guerra”
first appeared in IKON: Creativity and Change, Second Series,
No. 4, 1985.
First Edition Cover and Text Design: Pamela Wilson Design
Studio
Second Edition Cover Re-Design: Kajun Design

first Edition Cover Art: Pamela Wilson (Ehécall, The Wind)
Second Edition Typesetting: Kathleen Wilkinson
Senior Editor: Joan Pinkvoss
Managing Editor: Shay Brawn
Production, Second Edition: Emma Bianchi, Corey Cohen, Gina
GemeLlo,
Shahara Godfrey, Golda Sargento, Pimpila Thanaporn
Production, first Edition: Cindy Cleary, Martha Davis, Debra
DeBondt,
Rosana Francescato, Amelia Gonzalez, Lorraine Grassano,
Ambrosia Marvin,
Papusa Molina, SukeyWilder, Kathleen Wilkinson
Printed in the U.S.A.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Anzaldtia, Gloria.
Borderlands : the new mestiza = La frontera / Gloria Anzaldba
introduction by Sonia SaldIvar-Hult. -- 2nd ed.
p. 264 cm.
EngLish and Spanish.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN-i 3: 978-1-879960-56-5 (paper) -- ISBN-b: 1-879960-56-7
(paper)
1. Mexican-American Border Region--Poetry. 2. Mexican-
American
women--Poetry. 3. Mexican-American Border Region--
Civilization.
I. Title. II. Title: Frontera.
PS3551.N95B6 1999
811’ .54——dc2l

With an introduction by Sonia SaldIvar-Hull
99-22546
CIP
7
La conciencia de la mestiza
Towards a New Consciousness
For Ia mujer de ml raza
habtará et espIritu.1
José Vasconcelos, Mexican philosopher, envisaged una raza
mestiza, una mezcta de razas afines, una raza de color—ta
primera raza sIntesis del gtobo. He called it a cosmic race, ta
raza casmica, a fifth race embracing the four major races of the
world.2 Opposite to the theory of the pure Aryan, and to the pol
icy of racial purity that white America practices, his theory is
one
of inclusivity. At the confluence of two or more genetic
streams,
with chromosomes constantly “crossing over,” this mixture of
races, rather than resulting in an inferior being, provides hybrid
progeny, a mutable, more malleable species with a rich gene
pool. From this racial, ideological, cultural and biological cross
poffinization, an “alien” consciousness is presently in the mak
ing—a new mestiza consciousness, una conciencla de mujer It
is a consciousness of the Borderlands.
Una lucha de fronteras I A Struggle of Borders
Because I, a mestiza,

continually walk out of one culture
and into another,
because I am in all cultures at the same time,
alma entre dos mundos, tres, cuatro,
me zumba la cabeza con to confradictorio.
Estoy norteada por todas las voces que me habtan
simuttáneamen te.
101100
La conciencia tie Ia mestiza /Towards a New Consciousness
The ambivalence from the clash of voices results in mental
and emotional states of perplexity. InternaL strife results in inse
curity and indecisiveness. The mestiza’s dual or multiple per
sonality is plagued by psychic restlessness.
In a constant state of mental nepantilism, an Aztec word
meaning torn between ways, ta mestiza is a product of the trans
fer of the cultural and spiritual values of one group to another.
Being tricultural, monolingual, bilingual, or multilingual, speak
ing a patois, and in a state of perpetual transition, the mestiza
faces the dilemma of the mixed breed: which collectivity does
the daughter of a darksldnned mother listen to?
Et choque tie un alma atrapado entre et mundo del
espfritu y et mundo tie la técnica a veces ta deja entuttada.
Cradled in one culture, sandwiched between two cultures, strad
dling all three cultures and their value systems, Ia mestiza under
goes a struggle of flesh, a struggle of borders, an inner war.
Like
all people, we perceive the version of reality that our culture

communicates. Like others having or living in more than one
cul
ture, we get multiple, often opposing messages. The coming
together of two self-consistent but habitually incompatible
frames of reference3 causes un choque, a cultural collision.
Within us and within ta cuttura chicana, commonly held
beliefs of the white culture attack commonly held beliefs of the
Mexican culture, and both attack commonly held beliefs of the
indigenous culture. Subconsciously, we see an attack on our
selves and our beliefs as a threat and we attempt to block with a
counterstance.
But it is not enough to stand on the opposite river bank,
shouting questions, challenging patriarchal, white conventions.
A counterstance locks one into a duel of oppressor and
oppressed; locked in mortal combat, like the cop and the crimi
nal, both are reduced to a common denominator of violence. The
counterstance refutes the dominant culture’s views and beliefs,
and, for this, it is proudly defiant. MI reaction is limited by, and
dependent on, what it is reacting against. Because the counter-
stance stems from a problem with authority—outer as well as
inner—it’s a step towards liberation from cultural domination.
But it is not a way of life. At some point, on our way to a new
consciousness, we will have to leave the opposite bank, the split
between the two mortal combatants somehow healed so that we
are on both shores at once and, at once, see through serpent and
La conciencia tie la mestiza /Towards a New Consciousness
eagle eyes. Or perhaps we will decide to disengage from the
dominant culture, write it off altogether as a lost cause, and
cross
the border into a wholly new and separate territory. Or we
might
go another route. The possibilities are numerous once we decide

to act and not react.
A Tolerance For Ambiguity
These numerous possibilities leave Ia mestiza floundering in
uncharted seas. In perceiving conflicting information and points
of view, she is subjected to a swamping of her psychological
bor
ders. She has discovered that she can’t hold concepts or ideas in
rigid boundaries. The borders and walls that are supposed to
keep the undesirable ideas out are entrenched habits and pat
terns of behavior; these habits and patterns are the enemy with
in. Rigidity means death. Only by remaining flexible is she able
to stretch the psyche horizontally and vertically. La mestiza con
stantly has to shift out of habitual formations; from convergent
thinking, analytical reasoning that tends to use rationality to
move toward a single goal (a Western mode), to divergent think
ing,4 characterized by movement away from set patterns and
goals and toward a more whole perspective, one that includes
rather than excludes.
The new mestiza copes by developing a tolerance for con
tradictions, a tolerance for ambiguity. She learns to be an Indian
in Mexican culture, to be Mexican from an Anglo point of view.
She learns to juggle cultures. She has a plural personality, she
operates in a pluralistic mode—nothing is thrust out, the good
the bad and the ugly, nothing rejected, nothing abandoned. Not
only does she sustain contradictions, she turns the ambivalence
into something else.
She can be jarred out of ambivalence by an intense, and
often painful, emotional event which inverts or resolves the
ambivalence. I’m not sure exactly how. The work takes place
underground—subconsciously. It is work that the soul performs.
That focal point or fulcrum, that juncture where the mestiza
stands, is where phenomena tend to collide. It is where the pos

sibility of uniting all that is separate occurs. This assembly is
not
one where severed or separated pieces merely come together.
Nor is it a balancing of opposing powers. In attempting to work
out a synthesis, the self has added a third element which is
102 103
La conciencia tie Ia mestiza / Towards a New Consciousness
greater than the sum of its severed parts. That third element is a
new consciousness—a mestiza consciousness—and though ft is
a source of intense pain, its energy comes from continual cre
ative motion that keeps breaking down the unitary aspect of
each
new paradigm.
En unas pocas centurias, the future will belong to the mes
tiza. Because the future depends on the breaking down of para
digms, it depends on the straddling of two or more cultures. By
creating a new mythos—that is, a change in the way we perceive
reality, the way we see ourselves, and the ways we behave—ta
mestiza creates a new consciousness.
The work of mestiza consciousness is to break down the
subject-object duality that keeps her a prisoner and to show in
the flesh and through the images in her work how duality is tran
scended. The answer to the problem between the white race and
the colored, between males and females, lies in healing the split
that originates in the very foundation of our lives, our culture,
our languages, our thoughts. A massive uprooting of dualistic
thinking in the individual and collective consciousness is the
beginning of a long struggle, but one that could, in our best
hopes, bring us to the end of rape, of violence, of war.

Lu encrucijada I The Crossroads
A chicken is being sacrificed
at a crossroads, a simple mound of earth
a mud shrine for Eshu,
Yoruba god of indeterminacy,
who blesses her choice of path.
She begins her journey.
Su cuerpo es una bocacatte. La mestiza has gone from
being the sacrificial goat to becoming the officiating priestess
at
the crossroads.
As a mestiza I have no country, my homeland cast me out;
yet all countries are mine because I am every woman’s sister or
potential lover. (As a lesbian I have no race, my own people dis
claim me; but I am all races because there is the queer of me in
all races.) I am cultureless because, as a feminist, I challenge
the collective cultural/religious male-derived beliefs of Indo
La conciencia tie Ia mestiza /Iowards a New Consciousness
Hispanics and Anglos; yet I am cultured because I am participat
ing in the creation of yet another culture, a new story to explain
the world and our participation in it, a new value system with
images and symbols that connect us to each other and to the
planet. Soy un arnasamiento, I am an act of kneading, of unit
ing and joining that not only has produced both a creature of
darkness and a creature of light, but also a creature that
questions
the definitions of light and dark and gives them new meanings.
We are the people who leap in the dark, we are the people

on the knees of the gods. In our very flesh, (r)evolution works
out the clash of cultures. It makes us crazy constantly, but if the
center holds, we’ve made some kind of evolutionary step for
ward. Nuestra alma et trabajo, the opus, the great alchemical
work; spiritual mestizaje, a “morphogenesis,”5 an inevitable
unfolding. We have become the quickening serpent movement.
Indigenous like corn, like corn, the mestiza is a product of
crossbreeding, designed for preservation under a variety of con
ditions. Like an ear of corn—a female seed-bearing organ—the
mestiza is tenacious, tightly wrapped in the husks of her
culture.
Like kernels she clings to the cob; with thick stalks and strong
brace roots, she holds tight to the earth—she will survive the
crossroads.
Lavando y remojando et maIz en agua tie cal, despojando
etpellejo. Moliendo, mixteando, amasando, haciendo tortillas tie
masa.6 She steeps the corn in lime, it swells, softens. With
stone
roller on metate, she grinds the corn, then grinds again. She
kneads and moulds the dough, pats the round balls into tortillas.
We are the porous rock in the stone metate
squatting on the ground.
We are the rolling pin, et maIzy agua,
Ia masa barina. Somos el amasijo.
Somos to molido en et metate.
We are the comat sizzling hot,
the hot tortilla, the hungry mouth.
We are the coarse rock.
We are the grinding motion,
the mixed potion, somos et molcajete.
We are the pestle, the comino, ajo, pimienta,

104 105
La conciencia tie Ia mestiza / Towards a New ConsciousnessLa
conciencia tie Ia mestiza / Towards a New Consciousness
We are the chile colorado,
the green shoot that cracks the rock.
We will abide.
El camino de Ia mestiza I The Mestiza Way
Caught between the sudden contraction, the breath
sucked in and the endless space, the brown woman stands
still, looks at the sky. She decides to go down, digging her
way along the roots of trees. Sifting through the bones, she
shakes them to see if there is any marrow in them. Then,
touching the dirt to her forehead, to her tongue, she takes a
few bones, leaves the rest in their burial place.
She goes through her backpack, keeps her journal and
address book, throws away the muni-bart metromaps. The
coins are heavy and they go next, then the greenbacks flut
ter through the air. She keeps her knife, can opener and eye
brow pencil. She puts bones, pieces of bark, hierbas, eagle
feather, snakesldn, tape recorder, the rattle and drum in her
pack and she sets out to become the complete tolteca.
Her first step is to take inventory. Despojando, desgranan
do, quitando paja. Just what did she inherit from her ancestors?
This weight on her back—which is the baggage from the Indian
mother, which the baggage from the Spanish father, which the
baggage from the Anglo?
Pero es difIcit differentiating between to beredado, lo
adquirido, to impuesto. She puts history through a sieve,
winnows out the lies, looks at the forces that we as a race, as

women, have been a part of. Luego bota lo que no vale, los
desmientos, los desencuentos, et embrutecimiento. Aguarda el
juicio, hondo y enraIzado, tie ta gente antigua. This step is a
conscious rupture with all oppressive traditions of all cultures
and religions. She communicates that rupture, documents the
struggle. She reinterprets history and, using new symbols,
she shapes new myths. She adopts new perspectives toward
the darkskinned, women and queers. She strengthens her toler
ance (and intolerance) for ambiguity. She is willing to share, to
make herself vulnerable to foreign ways of seeing and thinking.
She surrenders all notions of safety, of the familiar.
Deconstruct,
construct. She becomes a nahual, able to transform herself into
a tree, a coyote, into another person. She learns to transform the
small “I” into the total Self. Se hace rnotdeadora tie su atma.
Segzin ta concepcion que tiene tie SI misma, asi será.
Que no se nos otviden los hombres
“Tti no sirves pa’ nada—
you’re good for nothing.
Erespura vieja.”
“You’re nothing but a woman” means you are defective Its
opposite is to be un macho. The modern meaning of the word
“machismo,” as well as the concept, is actually an Anglo inven
tion. for men like my father, being “macho” meant being strong
enough to protect and support my mother and us, yet being able
to show love. Today’s macho has doubts about his ability to
feed
and protect his family. His “machismo” is an adaptation to
oppres
sion and poverty and low self-esteem. It is the result of
hierarchical male dominance. The Anglo, feeling inadequate and
inferior and powerless, displaces or transfers these feelings to

the
Chicano by shaming him. In the Grmgo world, the Chicano suf
fers from excessive humility and self-effacement, shame of self
and self-deprecation. Around Latinos he suffers from a sense of
language inadequacy and its accompanying discomfort; with
Native Americans he suffers from a racial amnesia which
ignores
our common blood, and from guilt because the Spanish part of
him took their land and oppressed them. He has an excessive
compensatory hubris when around Mexicans from the other
side. It overlays a deep sense of racial shame.
The loss of a sense of dignity and respect in the macho
breeds a false machismo which leads him to put down women
and even to brutalize them. Coexisting with his sexist behavior
is a love for the mother which takes precedence over that of all
others. Devoted son, macho pig. To wash down the shame of his
acts, of his very being, and to handle the brute in the mirror, he
takes to the bottle, the snort, the needle, and the fist.
Though we uunderstand the root causes of male hatred and
fear, and the subsequent wounding of women, we do not excuse,
we do not condone, and we will no longer put up with it. from
106 107
La conciencia tie ta mestiza / Towards a New Consciousness
the men of our race, we demand the admission/acknowledg
ment/disclosure/testimony that they wound us, violate us, are
afraid of us and of our power. We need them to say they will
begin to eliminate their hurtful put-down ways. But more than
the words, we demand acts. We say to them: We will develop
equal power with you and those who have shamed us.

It is imperative that mestizas support each other in chang
mg the sexist elements in the Mexican-Indian culture. As long
as
woman is put down, the Indian and the Black in all of us is put
down. The struggle of the mestiza is above all a feminist one.
As
long as los hombres think they have to chingar mujeres and each
other to be men, as long as men are taught that they are superi
or and therefore culturally favored over ta rnuje as long as to be
a vieja is a thing of derision, there can be no real healing of our
psyches. We’re halfway there—we have such love of the
Mother,
the good mother. The first step is to unlearn the puta/virgen
dichotomy and to see Coatlalopeub-Coatticue in the Mother,
Guadalupe.
Tenderness, a sign of vulnerability, is so feared that it is
showered on women with verbal abuse and blows. Men, even
more than women, are fettered to gender roles. Women at least
have had the guts to break out of bondage. Only gay men have
had the courage to expose themselves to the woman inside them
and to challenge the current masculinity. I’ve encountered a few
scattered and isolated gentle straight men, the beginnings of a
new breed, but they are confused, and entangled with sexist
behaviors that they have not been able to eradicate. We need a
new masculinity and the new man needs a movement.
Lumping the males who deviate from the general norm with
man, the oppressor, is a gross injustice. Asombra pensar que
nos hernos quedado en esepozo oscuro donde et rnundo encier
ra a las tesbianas. Asombra pensar que hernos, corno
fernenistas y lesbianas, cerrado nuestros corazónes a los horn
bres, a nuestros hernranos tosjotos, desheredados y ;narginales
corno nosotros. Being the supreme crossers of cultures, homo
sexuals have strong bonds with the queer white, Black, Asian,
Native American, Latino, and with the queer in Italy, Australia

and the rest of the planet. We come from all colors, all classes,
all races, all time periods. Our role is to link people with each
other—the Blacks with Jews with Indians with Asians with
La conciencja tie Ia mestiza /Towards a New Consciousness
whites with extraterrestrjals. It is to transfer ideas and informa
tion from one culture to another. Colored homosexuals have
more knowledge of other cultures; have always been at the fore
front (although sometimes in the closet) of all liberation
struggles
in this country; have suffered more injustices and have survived
them despite all odds. Chicanos need to acknowledge the politi
cal and artistic contributions of their queer. People, listen to
what your joterla is saying.
The mestizo and the queer exist at this time and point on the
evolutionary continuum for a purpose. We are a blending that
proves that all blood is intricately woven together, and that we
are spawned out of similar souls.
Sornos una gente
Hay tantIsirnas fronteras
que dividen a ta gente,
pero por cadafrontera
existe tarnbién un puente.
—Gina Valdés7
Divided Loyalties. Many women and men of color do not
want to have any dealings with white people. It takes too much
time and energy to explain to the downwardly mobile, white
middle-class women that it’s okay for us to want to own “posses
sions,” never having had any nice furniture on our dirt floors or
“luxuries” like washing machines. Many feel that whites should

help their own people rid themselves of face hatred and fear
first. I, for one, choose to use some of my energy to serve as
mediator. I think we need to allow whites to be our allies.
Through our literature, art, corridos, and folktales we must
share
our history with them so when they set up committees to help
Big Mountain Navajos or the Chicano farmworkers or los
Nicaraguenses they won’t turn people away because of their
racial fears and ignorances. They will come to see that they are
not helping us but following our lead.
Individually, but also as a racial entity, we need to voice our
needs. We need to say to white society: We need you to accept
the fact that Chicanos are different, to acknowledge your rejec
tion and negation of us. We need you to own the fact that you
looked upon us as less than human, that you stole our lands, our
108 109
La conciencia tie Ia inestiza / Towards a New Consciousness
personhood, our self-respect. We need you to make public resti
tution: to say that, to compensate for your own sense of defec
tiveness, you strive for power over us, you erase our history and
our experience because it makes you feel guilty—you’d rather
forget your brutish acts. To say you’ve split yourself from
minor
ity groups, that you disown us, that your dual consciousness
splits off parts of yourself, transferring the “negative” parts
onto
us. (Where there is persecution of minorities, there is shadow
projection. Where there is violence and war, there is repression
of shadow.) To say that you are afraid of us, that to put distance
between us, you wear the mask of contempt. Admit that Mexico
is your double, that she exists in the shadow of this country,

that
we are irrevocably tied to her. Gringo, accept the doppelganger
in your psyche. By taking back your collective shadow the intra
cultural split will heal. And finally, tell us what you need from
us.
By Your True faces We Wifi Know You
I am visible—see this Indian face—yet I am invisible. I both
blind them with my beak nose and am their blind spot. But I
exist, we exist. They’d like to think I have melted in the pot.
But
I haven’t, we haven’t.
The dominant white culture is killing us slowly with its igno
rance. By taking away our self-determination, it has made us
weak and empty. As a people we have resisted and we have
taken
expedient positions, but we have never been allowed to develop
unencumbered—we have never been allowed to be fully our
selves. The whites in power want us people of color to barricade
ourselves behind our separate tribal walls so they can pick us
off
one at a time with their hidden weapons; so they can whitewash
and distort history. Ignorance splits people, creates prejudices.
A misinformed people is a subjugated people.
Before the Chicano and the undocumented worker and the
Mexican from the other side can come together, before the
Chicano can have unity with Native Americans and other
groups,
we need to know the history of their struggle and they need to
know ours. Our mothers, our sisters and brothers, the guys who
hang out on street corners, the children in the playgrounds, each
of us must know our Indian lineage, our afro-mestizaje, our his
tory of resistance.

La conciencia tie ta mestiza / Towards a New Consciousness
To the immigrant mexicano and the recent arrivals we must
teach our history. The 80 million mexicanos and the Latinos
from Central and South America must know of our struggles.
Each one of us must know basic facts about Nicaragua, Chile
and
the rest of Latin America. The Latinoist movement (Chicanos,
Puerto Ricans, Cubans and other Spanish-speaking people work
ing together to combat racial discrimination in the marketplace)
is good but it is not enough. Other than a common culture we
will have nothing to hold us together. We need to meet on a
broader communal ground.
The struggle is inner: Chicano, indio, American Indian,
mojado, ;nexicano, immigrant Latino, Anglo in power, working
class Anglo, Black, Asian—our psyches resemble the
bordertowns
and are populated by the same people. The struggle has always
been inner, and is played out in the outer terrains. Awareness of
our situation must come before inner changes, which in turn
come before changes in society. Nothing happens in the “real”
world unless it first happens in the images in our heads.
El dIa de La Chicana
I will not be shamed again
Nor will I shame myself.
I am possessed by a vision: that we Chicanas and Chicanos
have taken back or uncovered our true faces, our dignity and
self-
respect. It’s a validation vision.
Seeing the Chicana anew in light of her history. I seek an

exoneration, a seeing through the fictions of white supremacy, a
seeing of ourselves in our true guises and not as the false racial
personality that has been given to us and that we have given to
ourselves. I seek our woman’s face, our true features, the posi
tive and the negative seen clearly, free of the tainted biases of
male dominance. I seek new images of identity, new beliefs
about ourselves, our humanity and worth no longer in question.
Estarnos viviendo en ta noche tie ta Raza, un tiempo cuan
do et trabajo se bace a to quieto, en lo oscuro. El dIa cuando
aceptamos taty corno Somosypara donde vamosyporque—ese
dia serd el dIa tie ta Raza. Yo tengo et conprorniso tie expresar
110 111
La conciencia de Ia mestiza / Towards a New Consciousness La
conciencia de Ia mestiza / Towards a New Consciousness
mi vision, ml sensibitidad, mlpercepciOn de ta revatidaciOn de
ta
gente mexicana, su mérito, esttmación, honra, apreclo, y
validez.
On December 2nd when my sun goes into my first house, I
celebrate et ella de ta Chicana y el Chicano. On that day I clean
my altars, light my Coattatopeub candle, burn sage and copal,
take et baño para espantar basura, sweep my house. On that
day I bare my soul, make myself vulnerable to friends and
family
by expressing my feelings. On that day I affirm who we are.
On that day I look inside our conflicts and our basic intro
verted racial temperament. I identify our needs, voice them. I
acknowledge that the self and the race have been wounded. I
recognize the need to take care of our personhood, of our racial

self. On that day I gather the splintered and disowned parts of Ia
gente mexicana and hold them in my arms. Todas las partes de
nosotros vaten.
On that day I say, “Yes, all you people wound us when you
reject us. Rejection strips us of self-worth; our vulnerability
exposes us to shame. It is our innate identity you find wanting.
We are ashamed that we need your good opinion, that we need
your acceptance. We can no longer camouflage our needs, can
no longer let defenses and fences sprout around us. We can no
longer withdraw. To rage and look upon you with contempt is to
rage and be contemptuous of ourselves. We can no longer blame
you, nor disown the white parts, the male parts, the pathological
parts, the queer parts, the vulnerable parts. Here we are
weaponless with open arms, with only our magic. Let’s try it
our
way, the mestiza way, the Chicana way, the woman way.”
On that day, I search for our essential dignity as a people, a
people with a sense of purpose—to belong and contribute to
something greater than our pueblo. On that day I seek to recover
and reshape my spiritual identity. Anlmate! Raza, a celebrar et
ella tie la Chicana.
El retorno
MI movements are accomplished in six stages,
and the seventh brings return.
—1 Ching8
Tan to tiempo sin verte casa mIa,
ml cuna, ml hondo nido tie Ia huerta.
— “Soledad”9
I stand at the river, watch the curving, twisting serpent, a

serpent nailed to the fence where the mouth of the Rio Grande
empties into the Gulf.
I have come back. Tanto dolor me costO el atejamlento. I
shade my eyes and look up. The bone beak of a hawk slowly cir
cling over me, checking me out as potential carrion. In its wake
a little bird flickering its wings, swimming sporadically like a
fish.
In the distance the expressway and the slough of traffic like an
irritated sow. The sudden pull in my gut, la tierra, los
aguaceros.
My land, el viento soptando la arena, et tagartijo debajo tie un
nopatlto. Me acuerdo como era antes. Una region desértica tie
vasta ttanuras, costeras de baja attura, tie escasa ttuvla, tie
chaparrales formados por mesqultes y hulzaches. if I look real
hard I can almost see the Spanish fathers who were called “the
cavalry of Christ” enter this valley riding their burros, see the
clash of cultures commence.
Tierra natal. This is home, the small towns in the Valley, los
puebtltos with chicken pens and goats picketed to mesquite
shrubs. En las cotonias on the other side of the tracks, junk cars
line the front yards of hot pink and lavender-trimmed houses—
Chicano architecture we call it, self-consciously. I have missed
the TV shows where hosts speak in half and half, and where
awards are given in the category ofTex-Mex music. I have
missed
the Mexican cemeteries blooming with artificial flowers, the
fields of aloe vera and red pepper, rows of sugar cane, of corn
hanging on the stalks, the cloud of potvareda in the dirt roads
behind a speeding pickup truck, et sabor tie tamales tie rez y
venado. I have missed ta yegua colorada gnawing the wooden
gate of her stall, the smell of horse flesh from Canto’s corrals.
Hecho menos las noches catlentes sin alre, nocbes tie tinternas
y lechuzas making holes in the night.

I still feel the old despair when I look at the unpainted, dilap
idated, scrap lumber houses consisting mostly of corrugated alu
minum. Some of the poorest people in the U.S. live in the
Lower
Rio Grande Valley, an arid and semi-arid land of irrigated
farming,
intense sunlight and heat, citrus groves next to chaparral and
cac
tus. I walk through the elementary school I attended so long
ago,
that remained segregated until recently. I remember how the
white teachers used to punish us for being Mexican.
112 113
La conciencia de Ia mestiza /Towards a New Consciousness
How I love this tragic valley of South Texas, as Ricardo
Sanchez calls it; this borderland between the Nueces and the
Rio
Grande. This land has survived possession and ill-use by five
countries: Spain, Mexico, the Republic of Texas, the U.S., the
Confederacy, and the U.S. again. It has survived Anglo-Mexican
blood feuds, lynchings, burnings, rapes, pillage.
Today I see the Valley still struggling to survive. Whether it
does or not, it will never be as I remember it. The borderLands
depression that was set off by the 1982 peso devaluation in
Mexico resulted in the closure of hundreds of Valley
businesses.
Many people lost their homes, cars, land. Prior to 1982, U.S.
store owners thrived on retail sales to Mexicans who came
across
the border for groceries and clothes and appliances. While
goods

on the U.S. side have become 10, 100, 1000 times more expen
sive for Mexican buyers, goods on the Mexican side have
become
10, 100, 1000 times cheaper for Americans. Because the Valley
is
heavily dependent on agriculture and Mexican retail trade, it
has
the highest unemployment rates along the entire border region;
it is the Valley that has been hardest hit.10
“It’s been a bad year for corn,” my brother, Nune, says. As he
talks, I remember my father scanning the sky for a rain that
would end the drought, looking up into the sky, day after day,
while the corn withered on its stalk. My father has been dead
for
29 years, having worked himself to death. The life span of a
Mexican farm laborer is 56—he lived to be 3$. It shocks me that
I am older than he. I, too, search the sky for rain. Like the
ancients, I worship the rain god and the maize goddess, but
unlike my father I have recovered their names. Now for rain
(irri
gation) one offers not a sacrifice of blood, but of money.
“Farming is- in a bad way,” my brother says. “Two to three
thousand small and big farmers went bankrupt in this country
last year. Six years ago the price of corn was $8.00 per hundred
pounds,” he goes on. “This year it is $3.90 per hundred
pounds.”
And, I think to myself, after taking inflation into account, not
planting anything puts you ahead.
I walk out to the back yard, stare at los rosates de mama.
She wants me to help her prune the rose bushes, dig out the car
pet grass that is choking them. Mamagrande Ramona tambión
tenia rosates. Here every Mexican grows flowers. If they don’t

La conciencia de Ia mestiza /Towards a New Consciousness
have a piece of dirt, they use car tires, jars, cans, shoe boxes.
Roses are the Mexican’s favorite flower. I think, how
symbolic—
thorns and all.
Yes, the Chicano and Chicana have always taken care of
growing things and the land. Again I see the four of us kids
getting off the school bus, changing into our work clothes, walk
ing into the field with Papi and Mami, all six of us bending to
the
ground. Below our feet, under the earth lie the watermelon
seeds. We cover them with paper plates, putting terremotes on
top of the plates to keep them from being blown away by
the wind. The paper plates keep the freeze away. Next day or
the
next, we remove the plates, bare the tiny green shoots to the
elements. They survive and grow, give fruit hundreds of times
the size of the seed. We water them and hoe them. We harvest
them. The vines dry, rot, are plowed under. Growth, death,
decay, birth. The soil prepared again and again, impregnated,
worked on. A constant changing of forms, renacimientos de ta
tierra macire.
This land was Mexican once
was Indian always
and is.
And will be again.
118
Notes

6. According to Jung and James Hiliman, “archetypes” are the
presences
of gods and goddesses in the psyche. Hiliman’s book, Re-
Visioning
Psychology (NewYork, NY: Harper Colophon Books, 1975), has
been instru
mental in the development of my thought.
7. Yernayá is also known as the wind, Oyá as the whirlwind.
Accord
ing to Luisah Teish, I am the daughter of Yernayá, with Oyá
being the moth
er who raised me.
8. Another form of the goddess Coatticue is Chirnatma, Shield
Hand, a
naked cave goddess of the Huitznahua who was present at
Aztlãn when the
Aztecs left from that point of origin. Burland, 166-167.
9. A sculpture, described as the most horrifying and monstrous
in the
world, was excavated from beneath the Zocalo, the cathedral
square in
Mexico City, in 1824, where it had lain since the destruction of
the Aztec

capital ofTenochtitlãn. Every year since the Conquest, people
had come dur
ing an autumn festival with gifts of fruit and flowers which they
laid on the
pavement of the central square. The Indians maintained that
there was some
body very holy and powerful underneath. Burland, 39-40.
10. Juan Eduardo Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols, translated
from the
Spanish by Jack Sage (NewYork, NY: Philosophical Library,
1962), 76.
How to Tame a Wild Tongue
1. Ray Gwyn Smith, Moorland is Cold Country, unpublished
book.
2. Irena Klepfisz, “Di rayze aheymirhe Journey Home,” in The
Tribe of
Dime A lewish Women’s Anthology, Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz
and Irena
Klepfisz, eds. (Montpelier, VT: SinisterWisdom Books, 1986),
49.
3. R.C. Ortega, DialectotogIa Del Barrio, trans. Hortencia S.
Mwan
(Los Angeles, CA: R.C. Ortega Publisher & Bookseller, 1977),
132.

4. Eduardo Hernandéz-Chávez, Andrew D. Cohen, and Anthony
F
Beltramo, El Lenguale cle los Chicanos: Regional and Social
Characteristics
of Language Used By Mexican Americans (Arlington, VA:
Center for Applied
Linguistics, 1975), 39.
5. Hernandéz-Chãvez, xvii.
6. Irena Klepfisz, “Secular Jewish Identity: Yidishkayt in
America,” in
The Tribe of Dma Kaye/Kantrowitz and Klepflsz, eds., 43.
7. Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz, “Sign,” in We Speak In Code:
Poems and
Other Writings (Pittsburgh, PA: Motheroot PubLications, Inc.,
1980), 85.
119
Notes
8. Rodolfo Gonzales, I Am loaguIn I Yo Soy JoaguIn (New
York, NY:
Bantam Books, 1972). It was first published in 1967.
9. Kaufman, 68.
10. Chavez, 88-90.

11. “Hispanic” is derived from Hispanis (Espana, a name given
to the
Iberian Peninsula in ancient times when it was a part of the
Roman Empire)
and is a term designated by the U.S. government to make it
easier to handle
us on paper.
12. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo created the Mexican-
American in
1848.
13. Anglos, in order to alleviate their guilt for dispossessing the
Chicano,
stressed the Spanish part of us and perpetrated the myth of the
Spanish
Southwest. We have accepted the fiction that we are Hispanic,
that is
Spanish, in order to accommodate ourselves to the dominant
culture and its
abhorrence of Indians. Chavez, 88-91.
Tiliti, Tiapalli I The Path of the Red and Black Ink
1. R. Gordon Wasson, The Wondrous Mushroom: Mycolatry in
Mesoamerica (NewYork, NY: McGraw-Hill Book Company,
1980), 59, 103.
2. Robert Plant Armstrong, The Powers of Presence:
Consciousness,
Myth, and Affecting Presence (Philadelphia, PA: University of
Pennsylvania
Press, 1981), 11, 20.
3. Armstrong, 10.

4. Armstrong, 4.
5. Miguel Leon-Portilla, LosAntiguos Mexicanos:A través de
sus cróni
casv cantares (Mexico, D.f: Fondo de Cultura Económica,
1961), 19, 22.
6. Leon-Portilla, 125.
7. In Xóchitl in CuIcatl is Nahuatl for flower and song, flory
canto.
8. Nietzsche, in The Will to Power, says that the artist lives
under a
curse of being vampirized by his talent.
La conciencia de ta mestiza /Towards a New Consciousness
1. This is my own “take off” on Jose Vasconcelos’ idea. José
Vasconcelos, La Raza Cósrnica: Misión de Ia Raza Ibero-
Arnericana
(Mexico: Aguilar S.A. de Ediciones, 1961).
120
Notes
2. Vasconcelos.
3. Arthur Koestler termed this “bisociation.” Albert Rothenberg,
Th
Creative Process in Art. Science, and Other fieLds (Chicago,
IL: University
of Chicago Press, 1979), 12.

4. In part, I derive my definitions for “convergent” and
“divergent”
thinking from Rothenberg, 12-13.
5. To borrow chemist Ilya Prigogine’s theory of “dissipative
structures.”
Prigogine discovered that substances interact not in predictable
ways as it
was taught in science, but m different and fluctuating ways to
produce new
and more complex structures, a kind of birth he called
“morphogenesis,”
which created unpredictable innovations. Harold Gilliam,
“Searching for a
NewWorld View,” This World (January, 1981), 23.
6. Tortillas de masa harina: corn tortillas are of two types, the
smooth uniform ones made in a tortilla press and usually bought
at a tortilla
factory or supermarket, and gorditas, made by mixing inasa with
lard or
shortening or butter (my mother sometimes puts in bits of bacon
or cl,ichar
rones).

7. Gina Valdés, Puentes y fronteras: Coptas Chicanas (Los
Angeles,
CA: Castle Lithograph, 1982), 2.
8. Richard Wilhelm, The I Ching or Book of Changes, trans.
Cary F.
Baynes (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1950), 98.
9. “Soledad” is sung by the group Haciendo Punto en Otro Son.
10. Out of the twenty-two border counties in the four border
states,
Hidalgo County (named for father Hidatgo who was shot in
1810 after insti
gating Mexico’s revolt against Spanish rule under the banner of
Ia Virgen de
Guadalupe) is the most poverty-stricken county in the nation as
well as the
largest home base (along with Imperial in California) for
migrant farmwork
ers. It was here that I was born and raised. I am amazed that
both it and I
have survived.
1

COMMON BELIEF 1
I don’t think of my students in terms of their race or ethnicity.
I am color blind when it comes to my teaching.
Background
When teachers say they are color blind, they are usually saying
that they do not discriminate
and that they treat all their students equally. Of course, being
fair and treating each student with
respect are essential to effective teaching. However, race and
ethnicity often play important
roles on children’s identities, and contribute to their culture,
their behavior, and their beliefs.
When race and ethnicity are ignored, teachers miss
opportunities to help students connect with
what is being taught. Recognizing that a student’s race and
ethnicity influences their learning
allows teachers to be responsive to individual differences. In
some cases, ignoring a student’s
race and ethnicity may undermine a teacher’s ability to
understand student behavior and
student confidence in doing well in a school culture where
expectations and communication are
unfamiliar. An individual’s race and ethnicity are central to her
or his sense of self but they are
not the whole of personal identity. Moreover, how important an
individual’s race and ethnicity is
to their identity will vary and teachers need to take that into
account as they seek to learn more
about their students.
Questions to Consider
1. What are some ways for educators to acknowledge students’
ethnic, cultural, racial, and
linguistic identities?

2. Why is it important to incorporate their identities into the
curriculum?
3. What happens when teachers don’t validate their students’
racial and ethnic identities?
COMMON BELIEF 2
The gap in the achievement among students of different races
is about poverty, not race.
Background
Studies of the influences on student achievement invariably
show that students’ family income is
a significant correlate of low achievement. However, even when
students’ socioeconomic status
is taken into account, race often accounts for variance in student
performance. The reasons for
this are complex and experts disagree about why this is so. Most
experts dismiss explanations
having to do with race-related “culture” (i.e., the culture of
poverty thesis) or genetic differences
among races. Some experts believe that the racial influence on
achievement lies in the experiences
students of color may have in school—such as low expectations,
teaching that is insufficiently
responsive to differences in student interests and needs, or
differential access to learning
Common Beliefs
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opportunities. There is considerable agreement among
researchers that “stereotype threat”—
students’ belief that societal stereotypes about the limits of the
academic abilities of African
American, Latino and Native American students have merit--can
discourage such students from
seeking to achieve at high levels.
1. How does “stereotype threat” bring race to the surface in (a)
understanding student achievement
and (b) fostering productive student-teacher relationships?
2. How do school-based policies and practices reflect
institutional racism?
3. What can be done to dismantle racial bias and misconceptions
in the American educational system?
COMMON BELIEF 3
Teachers should adapt their instructional practice to the
distinctive cultures
of African American, Latino, Asian and Native American
students.
Background
Teachers who are responsive to their students’ values, beliefs
and experiences will be more
effective than those who are not. Some generalizations can be
made about the cultures of different
racial and ethnic groups that can help teachers to begin to
understand their students. However,
these generalizations also can lead to stereotypes and a failure

to recognize that within broad
racial and ethnic groupings (e.g., Latino and Asian) there are
very big average differences related
to subgroups (e.g., Chinese Americans and Cambodian
Americans) and social class differences
within groups. Moreover, even within subgroups and students of
similar socioeconomic status,
there are often significant differences in the factors that
influence student learning. There is no
substitute for getting to know each student well and adapting
instruction to these realities.
1. What are some ways in which teachers can view the cultures
of their students without
stereotyping them?
2. How might teachers learn about the cultural perspectives and
practices of their students?
3. What is culturally relevant pedagogy?
COMMON BELIEF 4
In some cultures, students are embarrassed to speak in front of
others so
I take this into account and don’t call on these students in class.
Background
Some students learn lessons in their homes and communities
about appropriate behavior that
discourage them from participating actively in class
discussions. Others prefer to work in small groups
or on their own but not to speak out in class. For example, such
dispositions are common among some
Native American students and some students of Asian descent.
Clearly teachers need to be sensitive
to such concerns among their students. On the other hand, when
students do not learn to express

themselves in public settings and to feel confident about their
verbal abilities, this may undermine the
development of verbal skills, and of literacy more generally.
This, in turn, limits their willingness and
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capacity to take on certain potentially rewarding roles and
responsibilities. Of course, the reluctance
of some students to engage in class may not be an artifact of
culture at all. Thus, generalizations about
cultural characteristics should be treated as possible
explanations rather than definitive diagnoses.
1. How does a culturally relevant curriculum validate the
cultural identity of students?
2. What is the connection between students’ cultural identities
and knowledge of their history?
To explore these and other questions, take a closer look at the
resources below.
COMMON BELIEF 5
When students come from homes where educational
achievement is not a high
priority, they often don’t do their homework and their parents
don’t come to school
events. This lack of parental support undermines my efforts to
teach these students.
Background

When families (not all students live with or are primarily cared
for by one or more parents) do
not get engaged in supporting their childrens learning, the job
of the teacher is more difficult. The
reasons why families don’t get involved are many. They may
lack interest, but more often parents
cannot get to the school, feel that that they lack the knowledge
of resources to help, or feel that
they do not know what their role should be. This is especially
true, of course, for families from
some cultures, for those who do not feel comfortable with
English and for single parents who
may work more than one job and have responsibilities for caring
for other children. Schools that
support teachers in reaching out to families in several ways, and
that see family engagement as
a school-wide responsibility, can significantly increase the
extent to which families help their
children do well in school.
1. What are some explanations for why parents avoid coming to
their children’s school?
2. How can educators invite and encourage the involvement of
families?
COMMON BELIEF 6
It is not fair to ask students who are struggling with English to
take on challenging
academic assignments.
Background
It is certainly true that English Language Learners (ELLs) who
are struggling with English may,
and probably will have, more trouble with tasks that require
reading than students whose native
language is English. However, when English language learners

are asked to do less challenging
work that other students, they can fall behind and, perhaps, stay
behind. In some cases, difficulty
with English is erroneously perceived by educators as limited
academic ability. Teachers need to
guard against having low expectations for English language
learners and using baised assessments
that reinforce those low expectations. The challenge is to
engage all students in learning content
at relatively high levels. This means that teachers need to seek
or provide extra help for students
whose English is limited to ensure that they have the same
learning opportunities as their English
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speaking peers. Easier said than done, of course. But it is
important to recognize that English
language learners often need years to master academic
language, which is more complex than the
social language they acquire more quickly. Therefore, English
language learners need to begin to
learn academic language immediately, to prevent them from
falling behind.
1. How can teachers both view and utilize students’ home
language in a positive manner?
2. How can teachers facilitate the development of academic
English for ELLs?

COMMON BELIEF 7
I believe that I should reward students who try hard, even if
they are not doing well
in school because building their self-esteem is important.
Background
It is certainly true that students who are confident in their
ability to do well in school achieve at
higher levels than do students with the same ability who lack
this sense of efficacy. However, if
students come to believe that they are achieving at high levels
when they are not, this can lead to
a belief that they need not work harder. If they realize that
other, less-able students are receiving
recognitions similar to theirs, this may lead students to believe
that less is expected of them than
their classmates. This, of course, is the case—less is being
expected and students can take this as
evidence that they do not have the ability to achieve at high
levels. High self-esteem does not, in
itself, translate to high academic performance. But, when high
self-esteem is derived from solid
performance in school, this contributes to student engagement
and effort to improve further.
Question to Consider
1. What do teachers need to keep in mind as they raise the
learning expectations for students who
are not as confident in their capabilities as learners?
COMMON BELIEF 8
I try to keep in mind the limits of my students’ abilities and
give them assignments
that I know they can do so that they do not become discouraged.
Background
Students do need to experience success in order to stay

motivated. It makes sense, therefore, to
give students work that they can accomplish. The potential
downside here is that this will lead to
lower expectations by both students and teachers. The challenge
for teachers, then, is to be clear
about the ultimate academic goal and ensure that students
engage in increasingly demanding
work in order to meet that goal. When that work is accompanied
by teacher support and the
expectation of success, students achieve at high levels.
Question to Consider
1. What are some ways that educators can simultaneously have
high expectations of their students
and acknowledge their individual needs?
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COMMON BELIEF 9
Students of different races and ethnicities often have different
learning styles
and good teachers will match their instruction to these learning
styles.
Background
Many teachers have learned that they should take into account
the learning styles of their students.
But the concept of learning styles has different meanings and
much recent research on learning
does not talk about learning styles. Among the reasons why
many cognitive psychologists discount

Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 53, No. 2, MarchApril 2002.docx

Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 53, No. 2, MarchApril 2002.docx

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