By Alicia Ortiz Alba
For today’s creative piece, we are delighted to introduce Nicholas Oulette’s statement from his thesis, Michelle Cliff’s Abeng: Culturally Responsive Teaching in Context. We hope you enjoy it!
Michelle Cliff’s Abeng: Culturally Responsive Teaching in Context
Why would you want to learn something you have no interest in? Students’ connections to what they are learning are incredibly important. Students need a reason to learn; they need to feel connected to their education in order to be engaged and understand the material. In this paper, the classroom setting in Michelle Cliff’s Abeng is analyzed in order to investigate how a curriculum can be damaging to students when it does not account for the cultural identities of the students. 21st-century studies on culturally responsive teaching are used to qualify the events in Abeng to understand how to design curricula relevant to students.