Culturally Responsive Practices and Illuminating The Magnitude of Us

Posted on October 30, 2024 in Blog Posts

This blog post aims to provide some ideas for ways educators, leaders, and librarians can evaluate, assess, and create opportunities for inclusive teaching and learning. The un/HUSH framework, discussed below, is intended to be an interdisciplinary, flexible blueprint for a multitude of subjects and age groups. It can help those who follow it better evaluate texts and evaluate or build curricula.

Why Culturally Responsive Teaching, Leading, and Learning Matter

As our world becomes more diverse, finding ways to connect and create inclusive learning becomes even more important. Inclusivity involves celebrating our differences, engaging in dialogue, learning about histories and stories, collaborating, and ensuring that we are unearthing and illuminating underrepresented voices. Culturally responsive teaching, leading, and learning is an important step toward implementing and sustaining more equitable learning spaces and content.

In her seminal essay, “Windows, Mirrors, and Sliding Glass Doors” (1990), Rudine Sims-Bishop articulated that books can serve alternatively as windows, mirrors, and sliding doors, enabling readers to better reflect on their own positionality and intersectionality, appreciate and value the perspectives and experiences of others, and gain a willingness to learn about and become immersed in the communities and cultures of people different than their own. Throughout my teaching career, I have learned from my students the importance of creating spaces that allow everyone to feel seen and heard. Tolerating diversity is simply not enough, nor does it encapsulate what we want for people. Instead, it is important to acknowledge, celebrate, and work toward creating welcoming spaces where people can engage with themselves and others and learn content that extends and challenges what they already know.

When searching for a tool that encapsulated my students’ feedback, my research of oral histories of Black women educators who taught pre/post-desegregation, and my own teaching experiences, I wanted to create something that was user-friendly and adaptable, allowing educators, leaders, and librarians to feel better equipped to implement culturally responsive practices. With some states and organizations beginning to implement or consider culturally responsive teaching and leading standards, we must provide methods to actionably implement culturally responsive practice. Whether through pedagogy, curricula, assessment of text choices, policies, and so forth, we need resources and tools that help us move into the action phase.

The un/HUSH Framework

The un/HUSH framework relies on five core principles:

1. (UN) Uniting for collective change and Naming our positionality
2. (H) Histories
3. (U) Unlearning
4. (S) Stories
5. (H) Healing

Collaborating and uniting for change, coupled with a better understanding of our own positionality reminds us of our collective and individual strength. I think about moments in our history where both elements were at play—the March on Washington and the Freedom Summer are both good examples of how collaboration, individual work, and reflection can coincide to help enact equitable changes. The second principle, histories (H), asks us to consider the vast histories and cultures of other communities. Ensuring that we illuminate and acknowledge marginalized and overlooked histories is paramount for developing a broad and global understanding of histories. Unlearning (U) asks us to commit to lifelong learning, consider our bias and learning gaps, and be mindful of engaging in reflection and self-assessment to better our craft as educators and/or leaders. The principle of stories (S) reminds us that stories can help bridge divides and form connections. Whether in the form of books, writing, poetry, or personal narratives, stories in all forms build perspectives and celebrate the differences and similarities of our experiences. Finally, healing (H) is what we ultimately aim to achieve. Moving toward healing helps us sustain culturally responsive spaces as it invites dialogue and relies on connection and interactions to help begin collective and individual healing. Students today are faced with many hurdles: mental health challenges, the realities of living in a post-pandemic world, racial trauma, and grief and loss, among many others. Though healing is a lifelong endeavor, learning is certainly a place where that process can begin.

The un/HUSH principles work together to build consistency and intentionality about how we can approach learning and leading in a manner that helps all students reach their highest potential. To be culturally responsive one must be willing to listen, to learn/unlearn/relearn, and to self-reflect and self-assess. It means being in community with others, collaborating, and, most importantly, listening. It means centering students and showing them the best version of themselves and others. Culturally responsive learning builds empathy, inquiry, and analysis, and it ideally helps students enter the world civically engaged and open-minded toward others.   

Do not feel confined to apply the un/HUSH framework in only one way. I encourage readers to use the framework in a multitude of ways that suit your needs and to find new ways for the framework to serve as a guide. For instance, perhaps it can be used to navigate a difficult conversation or reflect on an occurrence or lesson plan. Educators and librarians are creatives, so exciting things can emerge when we take a tool and expand its use. Below are some of the ways the un/HUSH framework has been used to date:

• Use the framework to plan new lessons or activities for learning. This might be classroom learning, adult education, or a youth space.
• Use the framework to assess texts you will use in a classroom with students.
• Use the framework to assess existing lessons or activities for learning. For example, perhaps you use Magic School AI or Teachers Pay Teachers to download a lesson plan—how do you assess its value and inclusivity? The framework can help you assess if an existing lesson (one created by you or someone else) has vital components that relate to the windows/mirrors/sliding doors concept discussed above.

When learning and leading extends across disciplines with the potential to break down barriers, it can lead to impactful long-term change, enabling us to better understand ourselves, analyze information, and connect with others. My own experiences learning and teaching have allowed me to experience transformational moments in which I could learn, unlearn, and relearn. Whether in quiet moments of self-reflection and journaling or through active conversations with students and colleagues, these moments have all led me to become a better educator, leader, and person. Culturally responsive teaching and leading embody necessary components that help us forge strong relationships with ourselves and others. Culturally responsive teaching and community immersive practices are all aspects of the un/HUSH framework that can help teachers and leaders embrace the beautifully diverse world in which we live as we continue to develop our professional learning.

Culturally responsive teaching and leading do not have to be isolating or burdensome. We do not have to avoid action for fear of doing the wrong thing. We are all learning. As poet Gwendolyn Brooks once wrote, “we are each other’s harvest; we are each other’s business; we are each other’s magnitude and bond.” Together, we can certainly work toward creating inclusive and equitable learning. We are building a bridge between the past and the present, ushering in stories and histories that reveal the full breadth of our world. Additionally, we are building spaces that foster a sense of inclusion and hope, so that learning is enriching, engaging, and exciting for students.

For additional resources and information, please see The Magnitude of Us: An Educator’s Guide to Creating Culturally Responsive Classrooms (2024) by Dr. Marlee S. Bunch.

About the author:

Dr. Marlee Bunch is an interdisciplinary educator, author, researcher, and lifelong learner. Her research examines the oral histories of Black female educators in Hattiesburg, Mississippi who taught between 1954-1971.

She received her doctoral degree from the University of Illinois in 2022 in Education/Policy/Organizational Leadership. Additionally, she has a Masters in Education (MEd), a Masters in Gifted Education (MS), a Bachelors in English, a certification in Diversity/Equity/Inclusion, and a certification in ESL (English as a Second Language).

Bunch has been an educator for 17+ years and is the founder of the un/Hush teaching framework. You can reach out or learn more about her work at https://www.marleebunch.com/.

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Header image is a detail of This is Harlem by Jacob Lawrence. Courtesy of Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. © 2021 The Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation, Seattle / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. For more information, click here.

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