Sabbatical Report Gale 1
Cosumnes River College Culturally Responsive Practices Resource Manual
Type B Sabbatical Report, Spring 2011
Completed by Lesley Gale
Respectfully Submitted to
Professional Standards Committee
Cosumnes River College
October 24, 2011
Sabbatical Report Gale 2
Abstract
The purpose of this project was to assemble, collect, create, and compile a resource
manual for faculty and staff at Cosumnes River College. The materials collected in the manual
were created or acquired for resources to be used in culturally responsive teaching discussion
groups which were held in CASSL the semesters before, during, and after the sabbatical. Some
of the materials were generated for more formal workshops for the CASSL Colloquium or flex
activities. The articles included were researched and provided as supporting documents for the
discussions. The resulting products are a large binder of documents to be kept in CASSL and
digital files of those same documents to be accessible from the CASSL website. These are
permanent resources for all faculty, staff, and administrators interested in learning more about
culturally responsive practices and using them in their roles on campus. The hope is that more
resources will continue to be added as the discussion groups and workshops related to culturally
responsive teaching continue in the future.
Sabbatical Report Gale 3
Background
Following my type B Sabbatical for fall 2009 titled “Culturally Responsive Teaching and
the Basic Skills Initiative,” I was asked to lead a workshop on culturally responsive teaching for
the CASSL Colloquium. This was a seventy-five minute workshop during which I attempted to
discuss the principles of culturally responsive teaching and demonstrate some of them with the
participants. Seventy-five minutes was not nearly enough time to cover the aspects of culturally
responsive teaching, and when the time was up, many of the participants asked to be able to have
follow-up discussions. With the support of CASSL, I held two workshops a month during the fall
2010 and spring 2011 semesters. There was a small core of faculty, staff, and administrators who
attended each workshop with a variety of others who attended at different times. Each time I sent
out an email notice for a workshop, people across the campus community would respond that
they were interested but could not attend. Recognizing there was much to be learned and very
little time in which to do it, I asked for a twenty percent sabbatical leave in order to speak to as
many faculty members as I could and collect materials that would help them to incorporate
culturally responsive practices into their roles on campus. I was particularly interested in
speaking with instructors who taught in content areas that are not easily adaptable to culturally
responsive teaching.
Purpose
The purpose of this type B sabbatical was to prepare a resource guide that would assist
instructors across all disciplines in implementing culturally responsive practices into their work
with students.
Sabbatical Report Gale 4
Activities to Address Sabbatical Purpose
I began to assemble the materials I had already created or acquired both in hard copies
and digitally. As I continued to lead the culturally responsive discussion groups, I continued to
create materials that would help the group members achieve the purposes of the group. For
example, at the first meeting of the spring 2011 semester, the group decided that we should focus
on one principle of culturally responsive teaching each month. As a result, I assembled articles
and created handouts related that principle, such as connections to students, content relevance, or
critical reflection. Additionally, as I learned more about various aspects of culturally responsive
teaching through my own research, I would bring in articles or create shorter handouts with key
information about these new ideas. The materials related to cultural data sets were acquired in
this way.
Over the course of the 2010-2011 academic year, twenty-three different people from the
campus community attended the workshops, representing many different roles and academic
areas. Because some administrators and classified staff members attended the groups, I changed
the title of the sabbatical and resulting manual to “Culturally Responsive Practices Resources
Manual” instead of teaching because the same principles may be applied to other types of work
with students besides teaching. Instructors who attended represented a variety of academic
disciplines, including math, ESL, English reading, English writing, art, philosophy, speech
communications, media, accounting, and history. Some instructors were adjunct faculty, and
some taught mostly online. When the groups met, I made a point of asking participants from the
various areas how they would apply the principles of culturally responsive teaching to their
discipline. I also had the opportunity to meet one-on-one with several of the instructors and
asked them the same question as well as solicited any representative assignments or materials.
Sabbatical Report Gale 5
A key discovery that resulted from these interactions was that the materials donated by
faculty particular to a specific discipline didn’t necessarily reflect culturally responsive teaching;
instead, the attitude and intent of the instructor and the instructional strategies used, which
largely go undocumented when looking for concrete evidence of culturally responsive teaching,
were where the cultural responsiveness occurred. For this reason, I didn’t end up with a large
number of resources that were particular to a specific academic area. What I found was that
instructors from all areas who attended the discussion groups were themselves able to make the
connections between their content and the culturally responsive teaching principles.
Nevertheless, when I was able to find a document through research related to culturally
responsive teaching in a particular subject area, I included it in the resources. For example, there
is a short case study of a math instructor who successfully made her subject more relevant for her
college students, a write-up of how role playing can engage and connect students in history
classes, and a study that showed how culturally responsive teaching may be applied in online
classes.
After collecting the materials, I organized them into digital folders and separate tabs in
the binder. This was a challenge because I had some digital files on my office computer and
some on my home computer as well as hard copies in a variety of places at home and in my
office. I honestly had forgotten about some of the materials I had used, so it was rewarding to
have them assembled in one place and surprising to see how much I had. For the binder, I used
plastic sheet protectors to hold several copies of the handouts so people may take them as
needed. I also decided to include the PowerPoint presentations I had given at different events
because they included some information that was not available in any other form. The
Sabbatical Report Gale 6
organization of the binder and digital files may be best represented in the following tables of
contents:
Culturally Responsive Practices
Professional Development
Basics of Culturally Responsive Teaching: Articles
 Document: “Culturally Responsive Teaching Defined” by various authors
 Article: “Preparing for Culturally Responsive Teaching” by Geneva Gay
 Article: “Seven Principles for Training A Culturally Responsive Faculty” by
Christine Johnson McPhail and Kelley L. Costner
 Article: “Culture, Style, and Cognition: Expanding the Boundaries of the
Learning Paradigm for African-American Learners in the Community College”
by Irving Pressley McPhail, Christine Johnson McPhail and Rita Smilkstein
 Article: “Literacy, Cultural Diversity, and Instruction” by Carol D. Lee
 Article: “Literacy and Culture: Cultural Conflicts in Classroom Practices,
Culturally Responsive Teaching as Zones of Proximal Development”
by Carol D. Lee
 Article: “Culturally Responsive Pedagogy and Online Learning: Implications
for the Globalized Community College” by Daniel R. Smith and David Ayers
 Article: “Culturally Relevant Pedagogy: Ingredients for Critical Teacher
Reflection” by Tyron C. Howard
 Article: “Using the Lens of Critically Reflective Teaching in the Community
College Classroom” by Stephen D. Brookfield
 On Course Newsletter: “Educators and Diversity”
 Article: “Researching Race in Mathematics Education” by Danny Bernard
Martin
Sabbatical Report Gale 7
Basics of Culturally Responsive Teaching: Workshop
Materials














Culturally Responsive Teaching Survey
Culturally Responsive Teaching Goals
Cultural Data Sets (PowerPoint Printout)
Culturally Responsive Teaching Classroom Observation Tool
Basics of Culturally Responsive Practices and Cultural Data Sets
Does Culturally Responsive Teaching Apply to Me? and Starter Bibliography
Comparison of Conventional Teaching and Culturally Responsive Teaching
Establishing Inclusion Checklist
Community College Critical Reflection Notes
Culturally Responsive Teaching Follow-Up Discussions: Reflective Practice
and Social Group Membership Profile Activity
Culturally Responsive Teaching CASSL Colloquium Workshop PowerPoint
Exploring Beyond Familiar Territory Flex Presentation PowerPoint
Language Acquisition and Standard Written English PowerPoint
“Race, Culture, and Equity,” Selected Readings from National Writing Project
Urban Sites Project
Sabbatical Report Gale 8
Culturally Responsive Practices
Working with Students
Connections to Students and Ice Breakers:




Venn Diagram: Similarities and Differences in Groups of Three
Early Socialization and College Experiences Survey
Student Introduction and Goal Survey
Student Focus Group Topics (first in pairs; then share out)
Culturally Responsive Content Activities
 Role Playing in History Class; Ideas for Making Math Relevant
 Contrastive Analysis for Academic Language
 Personal Thesaurus for Academic Vocabulary
Connecting through Storytelling





Story Board
Storytelling is a Powerful Instructional Tool
Storytelling Resources
Math Stories
Article: “Why Stories Matter: The Art and Craft of Social Change” by
Marshall Ganz
Critique of the Leave
Overall, I am pleased with the results of the leave. However, I found that there was a
dearth of materials for specific disciplines in community colleges related to culturally responsive
teaching. This is why I began asking the content instructors themselves for potential materials.
Sabbatical Report Gale 9
At first I was disappointed that I wasn’t able to collect many items specific to academic
disciplines, but the resulting discovery that faculty committed to cultural responsiveness find
ways to use the principles in their classes is enlightening. I have recruited several of these
instructors (including math and art) to participate in a CASSL panel discussion November 21st in
which they will share the ways they use culturally responsive approaches in their subject areas.
The task now will be to encourage more instructors of various disciplines to participate in the
discussions. Now that I can see the variety of resources I have collected, I am excited to continue
adding to them, and when people reply to my email invitations saying they are interested in the
groups but are unable to attend, I will direct them to the resource manual. I believe this has
potential to assist the campus community in promoting student engagement and success.
Because of my lack of skill in manipulating websites, I was not able to post the digital
documents to the CASSL website, but I have organized them into folders on a USB drive, and
the CASSL administrative assistant has agreed to upload them for me. The former and current
CASSL Coordinators have been very supportive of my discussion groups as well as this project
in agreeing to house the resources in CASSL.
Method of Sharing
I will give a brief orientation of the materials to the people who attend the groups in
CASSL. In the next two months, there will be special panels related to culturally responsive
teaching, one on culturally responsive teaching in a variety of subject areas on November 21st
and another on the topic of educating African American males (the panel will include professors,
administrators, and students) on December 6th. I will be sure to mention the materials at these
events. I will also take the opportunity to inform the campus community at large through one of
the newsletters or forums that regularly circulates through emails.
Sabbatical Report Gale 10
I would like to thank the Professional Standards Committee for their generosity in
allowing me this chance to make a permanent contribution to Cosumnes River College through
this collection of culturally responsive practices resources.