CRS Resource Repository

As a school leader, what are you doing each day to show your team members and community that your school is committed to equitable outcomes for all students, particularly minoritized students? How are students’ intersectional identities, experiences, voice and choice integrated into every facet of the learning environment experience? What does a culturally relevant learning experience look like in person and remotely?

Dozens of reflection questions like these, and hundreds of possible answers in the form of action steps, comprise the core of The Leadership Academy’s new Portrait of a Culturally Responsive School. As schools, school systems and states plan their budgets for next year, it is critical to keep in mind recent research that found that equity-focused leadership promotes more equitable school outcomes. Culturally responsive leadership is the “how” for dismantling inequities. 

The actions in this framework are designed for leaders in any school system, whether the schools serve primarily Black students, Indigenous students, and students of color, an ethnically diverse student body, or majority white communities. To disrupt inequities, it is critical for communities of all colors and backgrounds to grapple with issues of race and culture by weaving them into adult and student learning experiences in ways that help them understand and talk about the role and impact of race in our communities and our country.

The guide contains dozens of guiding questions, worksheets, and sample indicators of what successful practice can look like. Leaders can use the tool to make data-informed decisions which will improve students’ learning experiences. The guide can be implemented in a variety of ways, including for teacher-to-teacher classroom observations, student-led observations, and reciprocal leader visits between schools.   

Guidance on how we have come to define equity-focused language in our work, based on years of partnership with school and system leaders across the country.

This California Department of Education webpage highlights eight culturally responsive teaching competencies for educators, cited from a New America article. These include highlighting students' cultures in the classroom and collaborating with students' families and the community. Ultimately, these practices encourage teachers to make use of the cultural tools their students add to the classroom.

This checklist contains 27 items teachers or observers can use to evaluate classroom practices. These items emphasize paying equal attention to all students and connecting classroom content to students' lived experiences. The aim is to expose educators to ways of making their classrooms more equitable.

This article defines equity in the classroom, why it is important, and how to reinforce it. Teachers should consider taking on "hard" conversations about equity, adapting to different learning styles, and urging all students to participate, even if it is not verbally in front of the whole class.

This academic report offers school leaders research-based recommendations on how to achieve a whole-child education, starting with building a positive school environment. The authors suggest implementing restorative practices rather than zero-tolerance policies, engaging with students' families, and creating multi-tiered systems of support to target all student needs.

This toolkit serves as a guide for district leaders in prioritizing equity in their district. Following definitions of various forms of inequity, such as socioeconomic and cultural, it offers concrete strategies for upholding equitable practices in a district. These strategies include organizing an equity team, gathering data on equity practices, creating an equity theory of change, and more. Each suggestion includes examples or templates, explanations or relevant literature, and guiding questions to help steer leaders in the right direction.

This is the Mississippi State Board of Education plan to implement a culturally responsive teaching and professional growth system. The presentation includes a definition of culturally responsive teaching (CRT), its eight dimensions (empowering, validating, emancipatory, comprehensive, transformative, multi-dimensional, humanistic, normative & ethical), and teacher growth strategies to implement CRT.

This is a set of activities for teachers to complete to create warm and affirming environments and affirm all cultural identities both in the classroom and virtually. There are links to four external resources such as an article on family engagement strategies and a video on building a belonging classroom, each followed by reflection questions and pointers.

This is a collection of four self-work tips for teachers to construct a culturally responsive learning environment. These include being transparent and intentional about culture, taking an appreciative stance, providing mirrors and windows, and educating about and for social justice. Each of these four tips have examples, including designing flexible seating to take an appreciative stance and honor students' power as much as your own, and being intentional about culture by co-creating class norms with students.

This resource offers teachers several strategies to create a welcoming and affirming classroom environment for ELL students. These strategies fall under four categories: getting to know students, welcoming students' language and culture, engendering success in the classroom, and creating a shared classroom culture. Each section includes specific examples as well as videos to learn more.

This article summarizes a webinar on creating a culturally responsive environment. It is told from the perspective of an immigrant and prior ELL student who is now a teacher. She emphasizes that culturally responsive teaching is ongoing, not a quick fix for educational equity. She offers teaching strategies such as embracing and utilizing students' native languages, building relationships with students by getting to know their culture, connecting with ELL families by including their home languages around the classroom, and above all, maintaining an asset-based mindset when considering the cultural diversity of your students.

The framework includes four dimensions, which are cultural awareness, knowledge of students' cultural backgrounds, culturally responsive curriculum and instruction, and empowering students. The resource provides practical strategies for implementing culturally responsive teaching, such as using culturally relevant materials, building strong relationships with students, and fostering a positive classroom culture. The article emphasizes the importance of understanding the cultural context of students' lives and creating a classroom environment that promotes equity and inclusivity.

This article highlights the importance of productive struggle in student learning. The article suggests that when educators talk less and allow students to struggle with content, it can lead to better retention of learning. It provides examples of productive struggle, such as problem-solving, questioning, and group work. The article emphasizes the importance of creating a safe and supportive learning environment, where students are encouraged to take risks and engage in productive struggle.

This article focuses on the importance of creating a positive school climate to support student success. It provides evidence that a positive school climate leads to increased student engagement, higher achievement, and better mental health. The article provides strategies for improving school climate, such as fostering positive relationships, promoting safety and inclusivity, and providing social and emotional learning opportunities. It also emphasizes the importance of involving families and communities in creating a positive school climate.

The resource outlines actions that school board leaders can take to promote equity and dismantle institutional racism in education. The publication emphasizes the need for school board leaders to engage in self-reflection, acknowledge and address the impact of racism in schools, and commit to taking action to promote equity. The resource provides specific actions that school board leaders can take, such as engaging with diverse communities, supporting the recruitment and retention of diverse educators, and implementing policies and practices that promote equity.

This article explores the importance of leadership that is culturally responsive in the context of gifted education. The authors analyze existing literature and argue that leaders in this field should have a deep understanding of diverse cultural backgrounds and experiences to provide an inclusive and equitable learning environment for gifted students. The article provides insights and recommendations for educators and leaders to foster culturally relevant practices in gifted education.

This is an article that explores the role of technology in building relationships with colleagues and students. The resource emphasizes that while technology can be a useful tool for communication and collaboration, it cannot replace the importance of one-on-one interactions in building strong relationships. This article provides practical strategies for educators to use technology to enhance, rather than replace, face-to-face interactions, such as using digital tools to facilitate communication, collaboration, and community building. It also highlights the importance of creating a positive school culture that fosters positive relationships among colleagues and students, and provides tips for building strong relationships with students, such as getting to know them as individuals, listening actively to their perspectives, and providing opportunities for student voice and choice.

This checklist provides a framework for educators to observe and reflect on their classroom practices in order to promote equity and inclusivity. It includes key areas such as classroom environment, instructional materials, and teaching strategies, and provides specific indicators that highlight equitable practices.

This framework provides high-quality instruction and intervention that addresses the academic, behavioral, and social-emotional needs of all students. The document highlights six essential components of MTSS, including leadership, data-based decision making, comprehensive assessment, evidence-based practices, tiered instruction and intervention, and family and community engagement. It emphasizes the importance of collaboration, continuous improvement, and using data to guide decision-making in MTSS implementation. The Essential Components of MTSS is intended to provide a foundation for schools and districts to design and implement an effective MTSS system that supports the academic and social-emotional development of all students.

This handbook provides practical strategies and examples for teachers to differentiate instruction in their classrooms. It emphasizes the importance of recognizing and responding to the diverse learning needs and strengths of students, and provides a range of differentiated instruction approaches such as curriculum compacting, tiered assignments, flexible grouping, and student choice.

This resource explores how racially diverse schools and classrooms can benefit all students. It discusses how diverse learning environments can enhance critical thinking, creativity, and problem-solving skills, while also reducing prejudice and promoting cross-cultural understanding. The authors suggest that addressing issues of segregation, inequity, and bias in educational policies and practices is crucial to fully realize the benefits of school diversity.

The CR-S framework helps educators create student-centered learning environments that affirm racial, linguistic and cultural identities; prepare students for rigor and independent learning, develop students’ abilities to connect across lines of difference; elevate historically marginalized voices; and empower students as agents of social change. It is grounded in the four principles of welcoming and affirming environments, high expectations and rigorous instruction, inclusive curriculum and assessment, and ongoing professional learning.

Teaching for Equity is an integrated framework designed to guide teachers to reflect on their practice, to see the connections across areas of research that support whole students, and to live out their commitments to anti-racism. The framework combines the three classroom strands of anti-racist curriculum and standards, radically inclusive communities and environments, and equitable instructional practices with the two resource strands of inner resources and school and system resources.

This article provides guidelines for evaluating and incorporating materials related to Native Americans into the classroom, with a focus on native book choices. Additional resources on teaching Native American culture are included.

This Smithsonian website provides a variety of teaching tools, scholarly resources, and interactive materials for educators to use to ignite and widen content and discussions about race. These resources explore the historical roots and contemporary impacts of race and racism in the United States and globally. The goal of this work is to enhance racial inclusion in our education systems and content.

Through this webpage the Massachusetts Department of Education defines culturally and linguistically sustaining practices and provides examples and resources for educators to implement these practices.

This page from the i-Ready website describes how this online educational platform supports culturally responsive teaching and learning. Examples are provided of how cultural responsiveness is integrated into their products such as mathematics in multicultural contexts and a lesson on American Sign Language.

This article outlines how to use a student-centered learning approach in the context of assessments. The article highlights the importance of relationships, students' stories, and community civic engagement in informing how to make performance assessments culturally responsive. Examples such as high school senior student portfolio assessments are used as a model.

This research-backed article discusses obstacles to culturally-responsive assessment for Indigenous students, describes examples of efforts in the U.S. and elsewhere to improve assessment for Indigenous students, explores the concept of “culturally-valid assessment,” and interleaves recommendations for going forward constructively within various sections of the paper.

This article outlines the importance of culturally responsive teaching practices and provides related resources. For example there are materials for supporting LBGTQ-inclusive teaching, materials for promoting cultural responsiveness at the district and state levels, and reflection guides for teachers.

This Learning for Justice webpage outlines the importance of culturally responsive curriculum and provides resources to implement it. Included on their website are articles, lessons, films, webinars, and frameworks that can help foster shared learning and reflection for educators, young people, caregivers and community members.

These professional learning modules offer school faculty and staff information on culturally responsive issues such as implicit bias in hiring, power and privilege, intersectionality, gender identity, and microagressions in the classroom.

The purpose of this publication is to provide a collection of scenarios to help educators become more aware of the ethical dimensions of their profession. These brief scenarios provide educators the opportunity to engage in collegial discussions about situations involving cultural competence and bias. The intent of these scenarios is to highlight elements of the Connecticut State Department of Education's Code of Professional Responsibility for Teachers, which is included at the end of the document.

This information brief defines cultural responsiveness in the context of mental health provision. Specifically, it encourages mental health providers to build cultural self-awareness and identify personal biases, and take students' culture into account when providing care.

This toolkit provides guidance and resources to support current and aspiring school principals in developing their personal capacity for leadership and meeting the criteria outlined in the Utah State Standards for Educational Leadership, specifically Strand 7: Equity and Cultural Responsiveness. There are a variety of useful tools such as a reflection guide probing principals to look at outcomes according to student subgroups and analyze demographic enrollment in programs such as special education, and a checklist to self-evaluate their culturally responsive behaviors.

Dr. Tina Ellsworth from the Maine Department of Education leads a seminar on confronting hate and bias in schools. She argues that teachers should set expectations with students and ensure they know when to speak up and that they can and should interrupt hateful words. The webinar attendees break out into groups and share examples of biased language and how to address them. The strategies they share can be useful takeaways for educators to implement in their own classrooms.

The Massachusetts State Department of Education offers a host of cultural responsiveness professional development resources, including a video library of culturally responsive teaching examples, a teaching rubric, and a series of school profiles highlighting exemplary culturally responsive practices.

The author of this guide urges teachers to see achieving equity in the classroom as an ongoing effort, especially following the Black Lives Matter movement in summer of 2020. She points to reading materials to educate oneself on equitable classroom practices, particularly in classrooms serving Black students, as well as informational videos and social media threads. Lastly, she pushes teachers to look within themselves and process their feelings around racism and equity to prompt ongoing growth and change.

This article challenges teachers to identify their implicit biases, such as only looking to one side of the room to call on students, or which students they suggest for special opportunities. They also offer strategies to combat these biases, like having students meet in pairs before an all-group discussion to encourage participation and communicate to every student that their voice and opinion matters.

This webinar discusses intercultural competence (ICC) in the classroom and calls on teachers to become social justice educators, particularly in early language classrooms. The team at ACTFL argues teachers must encourage critical self-reflection and consideration of multiple perspectives for both their students and themselves. They also provide concrete examples teachers can model in their classrooms, such as prompting students to share the stories of their names. They hope that this webinar will help teachers understand intercultural competence and social justice and reflect on their own growth in these areas.

Presented in this brief is a portrait of a culturally responsive school. Organized into eight critical action areas of a culturally responsive leader (equity and access; mission, vision, and core values; instruction; adult learning and development; operations and resources; personal learning and development; strategic change and continuous improvement; community care and engagement), this guide is designed to support leaders and their school communities consciously disrupt systemic racism and decenter dominant culture. Each action area includes sample indicators as well as reflection questions to guide school leaders