Using Vignettes to Develop Culturally Responsive Teaching

From the Marshall Memo #428

In this article in Principal, Queens College/City University of New York professor Jacqueline Darvin suggests using “cultural and political vignettes” to get teachers (especially new teachers) thinking about the unspoken challenges of the profession. Here’s an example (from Sonia Nieto’s book, The Light in Their Eyes: Creating Multicultural Learning Communities):

A new student from India comes to your school and on her first day in the cafeteria, she begins eating rice with her hands. Several children make fun of her. You are her teacher and happen to be in the lunchroom when this happens. What do you do?

Asked to react to this scenario, educators divide sharply on whether the teacher should intervene immediately, later, or not at all. The facilitator’s goal is to get teachers to explore multiple perspectives and avoid responding in ways that are biased, stereotyped, or narrow. Points like these often come up:

• Failing to intervene might lead to a Columbine scenario.
• Intervening might make the girl feel worse by calling attention to her eating habits.
• Intervening might give the girl the message that her cultural values and customs are “wrong” – that she needs to be “more American.”
• One approach might be to talk privately to the girl about “the American way of eating rice” and let her decide what to do.
• Another would be for the teacher to sit beside her and eat French fries “the American way”, thus demonstrating to the girl and those teasing her that eating with one’s hands is acceptable in certain situations.

There isn’t a single right response to this situation, and facilitators should help teachers expand their perspective by asking questions such as, “Do all Indian people eat rice with their hands?” and “Are there other variables in why people eat in a particular way?”

Role-playing is another way to handle vignettes – assigning roles to teachers, giving them a moment to think through what they will do, and having the audience support them as they work through the situation and then discuss how it went, including the importance of nonverbal communication – gestures, posture, and intonation. 

Darvin suggests several more cultural and political vignettes for professional development discussions:

• You are upset with a student who does not make eye contact when he talks to you, even after you have asked several times that he do so. Why might this student be behaving in this way? How might this type of misunderstanding be avoided or reconciled?

• It is parent-teacher conference night and the father of a student in your class comes to see you. His son is doing poorly in your class and blames you and the school for his son’s problems. What can you say and do to improve this situation? What pitfalls should you avoid?

• You notice that students tend to self-segregate along racial lines in your class discussion groups. Do you address this situation or simply let students continue working this way all year? If you decide to intervene, how would you do it and why?

• You teach sixth grade and know that you have students with same-sex parents. You have heard students making homophobic comments and have even witnessed teasing of male students who display typically feminine characteristics and female students who display typically masculine traits. Should you address this situation in your class?

“Novice Teachers Need Real Professional Development” by Jacqueline Darvin in Principal, March/April 2012 (Vol. 91, #4, p. 28-31), http://www.naesp.org