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more specifically in planning for their transition.
Some of these barriers were: "(a) power imbalance; (b) psychological or attitudinal; (c) logistics;
(d) information; (e) communication; (f) SES and
contextual factors; and (g) cultural influences" (p.
4).
Araujo (2009) discusses four best practices
that have been shown to be successful when
working with families from CLDB. These practices
are: "(a) incorporating funds of knowledge, (b)
practicing culturally relevant teaching, (c) fostering effective communication, and (d) extending
and accepting assistance" (p. 116). "Funds of
knowledge" refers to the knowledge and skills
that students learn at home that they bring with
them to the school environment (Moll, Amante,
Neff, & Gonzalez, 1992). By understanding your
students holistically within the context of their
family dynamics, you can incorporate the knowledge they bring into your instruction in order to
bridge their two worlds: school and home.
Culturally responsive teachers build a learning community by demonstrating cultural caring.
Characteristics include an ability to develop cultural knowledge, design culturally relevant materials, understand cross-cultural communication,
and translate this into cultural responsive instruction (Brown, 2007). A key starting point to cultural
relevance is guarding against "deficit thinking"
and viewing different cultures and backgrounds
as inferior or in need of fixing (Weiner, 2006). As
practitioners, engaging in self-reflection and becoming aware of our biases can be a powerful exercise in broadening our acceptance of cultural
differences and highlighting ways we can bring
our students' life experiences into instruction. In
discussing the four best practices, Araujo (2009)
summarizes research that found bringing families
from CLDB into the classroom had a positive impact on students as well as the families themselves who viewed educators as caring about
