Best Practice...

I don't claim to be the best teacher in the world, but it seems to me that "culturally responsive instruction" and "strategic teaching" are simply good teaching practices and frankly, common sense approaches.  Providing options, allowing students to choose, and relating subject matter to the real world, seem to me to be things that should happen frequently in any classroom setting--especially those comprised of diverse students with varying cultural backgrounds.  I mean, creating relevant lessons?  Using graphic organizers?  If teachers don't do this on a daily basis, they have no business teaching.  That being said, the reality is that many lazy, complacent, inflexible, and biased teachers are more concerned about their plans for the upcoming weekend than about student learning.  I feel a rant coming on...How many times do you hear "It's friday!" after saying hello to a teacher the day before a weekend?  How many times do you see students watching movies and eating snacks in classrooms the day before a vacation?  How many times do you hear teachers chatting away during professional development workshops?  It's unfortunate that papers such as this one by Bartolome even have to be written. 
It's pretty obvious how Bartolome feels about privilege and power in the classroom.  On page 176, she writes a few choice words that describe marginalized students (schools have denied their humanity, robbed them of their culture, reduced them to subhumans, etc). 
She writes, "the creation of learning environments for low SES and ethnic minority students, similar to those for more affluent and White populations, requires that teachers discard deficit notions and genuinely value and utilize students' existing knowledge bases in their teaching.  In order to do so, teachers must confront and challenge their own social biases so as to honestly begin to perceive their students as capable learners.  Furthermore, they must remain open to the fact that they will also learn from their students.  Learning is not a one-way undertaking." (p 182)  The problem with this is that I'm just not sure the majority of teachers reflect on their teaching with this in mind.  
One example that Bartolome cites on page 179 highlights "teachers who uncritically follow school practices that unintentionally or intentionally serve to promote tracking and segregation within school and classroom contexts continue to reproduce the status quo." I can pretty much guarantee that this is the farthest thing from most teachers minds during the school year.  But on the other hand, teachers teach the classes assigned to them by administration, and in most cases, can't help if they are given an AP, honors, college prep, or lower level courses.  
Bartolome writes that teachers need to be more culturally sensitive.  This should manifest itself in the classroom with the teacher offering students choices and taking into account their different backgrounds in order to encourage them to take ownership of their education.  In addition, teachers need to prepare students with skills they need to be "independent and metacognitively aware".  It's the skill building that students really need in order to succeed in their classes and in their lives beyond school.  Again, in my opinion,these are just best teaching practices that ALL teachers should be employing on a daily basis.   
video link:  culture based education, Kamehameha schools
GK