Civil Rights in Memphis

Are culturally incompetent or unconscious teachers holding back their black students?
Cultural competency is defined as "having an awareness of one’s own cultural identity and views about difference, and the ability to learn and build on the varying cultural and community norms of students and their families".  In schools, this plays a very important part in classroom environments and student-teacher interactions. While it effects many aspects of the classroom, behavior analysis is arguably one of the most important aspects.
Behavior analysis bleeds into many institutional prejudices within the school system. Students can be suspended or expelled on the grounds of reoccurring behavioral issues. Not only should behavioral issues be handled in an entirely different manner, as suspension or expulsion leads to a number of other problems rather than addressing the issue at hand, but miscommunication and misunderstanding between students and educators can easily be labeled as behavioral problems by the educator. This harmful mindset disrupts the already uneven power dynamic between students and educators since students labeled as "disruptive" are not taken seriously.
Implementations made to become culturally and racially inclusive mean little without steps taken to understand fully understand the cultural and community differences between students and people leading the classrooms. Aside from learning about how these important aspects effect school environments, implementations in the curriculum must be made to explicitly include People of Color since historically, their contributions are often left out of the narrative. It should be necessary for all educators to participate in learning about cultural competence and cultural consciousness. The lasting effects educators have on all students that come in and out of their class should not be undermined.  School counselors, many of whom facilitate conversations on student-student conflicts, individual student problems, and act as a bridge between students and administration, also have a duty to to understand the importance of cultural competency. Policies should be implemented as it is an ethical responsibility of anyone within the educational system.


http://www.nea.org/home/39783.htm