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.
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.