Multiculturalism vs. Culturally Responsive Teaching

These days a lot of people are tossing around the words "multiculturalism" and "culturally responsive teaching". They sound a lot alike so some people use them interchangeably. Sadly, those words do not mean the same thing. Multiculturalism means representation of various cultures is found in your classroom and your school. Maybe you read aloud from the amazing book Amal Unbound to your class and listen to music with the lyrics in Chinese. These are great first steps in making sure that all children are welcome. This is not the same thing as culturally responsive teaching. CRT is more about the ways to teach individual children. Multiculturalism is about creating cultural harmony and culturally responsive teaching is more about differentiated learning.

This is a very basic summary. If you would like to know more, sign up for my newsletter! In the March issue you will find links to two new podcasts that I highly recommend, and both have to do with learning more about this topic!